The Missouri Plan

So our Ally in the war on terror Pervez Musharef seems to be having some problems. Pulling a page from the cold war playbook our President chose a quality guy to our buddy in the region in the dreaded “war on terror.” Oops. perhaps young democracies forced out of dictatorships are not so stable when the dictator is having problems maintaining as President. This guy is no better and no worse then any latin american banana dictator other then the fact that he has Militant Islamists that he needs to add to his mix in order to stay in power. Unfortunately this made him less then effective in assisting us in squashing them... even as we feed him 150 million or so a month.

Now...the real turn about this is that he is having problems not with terrorists but with the lawyers and the judiciary. Sounds like the Bush administration here. He suspends the constitution so he can control the terrorists and then cracks down on the Democracy people...using our weapons and our training...OOOOOOOPS! Our bad. It is kind of cute that lawyers and judges are leading the revolution. These are the people who normally back the system and rake in the cash. But this time they are out in the streets getting arrested and God knows what else. Who could get this indignant about a guy suspending the constitution and dismantling the supreme court? It probably makes sense... these were likely what our Republican friends would describe as “activist judges.”

Which brings us to the story of the day. The Missouri Non-Partisan Court Plan. Wikipedia explains it as follows:
“The Missouri Plan (originally the Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan), also known as the merit plan, is a method for the nonpartisan selection of judges currently used in 11 U.S. states as well as in many other countries. Many other states use a variant of it.

The Missouri Plan is a method to combine election and appointment of judges. Under the plan, judicial vacancies are first selected by independent commissions from all available applicants for that position. Three (3) names are forwarded to the governor who has sixty days to select one. If the governor does not select a one of the three to fill the position within those sixty days, the committee will then make the selection. At the general election soonest after the completion of one year service, the judge must stand in a "retention election". If a majority vote against retention, the judge is removed from office, and the process starts anew[1].”

A good link to explain the plan is on the Missouri Government site at http://www.courts.mo.gov/page.asp?id=297

This is also an excellent article about our struggles in Missouri to protect our courts at Justice At Stake: http://www.justiceatstake.org/contentViewer.asp?breadcrumb=3,570,679

Well said and simply put, although flawed it is the best system available to chose our judiciary. We used to elect judges which sounds awesome until you see how the elections get manipulated by big money and power politics. The Missouri Plan was invented because Boss Pendergast’s machine in KC was literally stocking the court with his people. Elections were held certainly but...they didn’t mean much and we had a bunch of political hacks. Now our current judges tend to be...political hacks but the system is designed for a better quality of political hack and also we tend to get hacks from both parties. Brilliant.

But this system is under attack. It is under attack from agenda-i-zed conservatives who know they can run attack campaigns which are just divisive enough to get 51% of the people who care to come out and vote for judges. This attack on our court plan takes many forms but it starts with complaints regarding “activist judges” who “legislate from the bench.” What they mean is that they need a group of patsy’s who will enforce the tenets of the Constitution in order to make sure that...in no particular order:

Abortion is illegal
Gays Can’t Marry
Haliburton’s Profits Can Go Unchecked
We can pray in school

I realize all these are divisive albeit important issues but do we really want the popular vote to decide these issues or do we want some people in our Courts who are intelligent and committed to the greater good whether agendaized or not. I don’t know but as a lawyer in St. Louis I have really come to enjoy the Judges we have in St. Louis City and County... especially when I go over to Illinois or way out in the Ozarks. You cannot believe how some of these judges who run powerful election machines run a really crappy court. They act is that judges who run for election are beholden to the lawyers who run their campaigns and that makes these Judges inherently biased and there is no attempt at a level playing field. If the Governor appoints a crony who made it on to the panel, that is OK with me. Once appointed that guy or gal is beholden to no one and can exercise their best judgement without worrying about campaign contributions or getting fired.

These same people who want to scratch the Missouri Plan have no apparent problem with a Republican President Appointing ALL the Federal Judges but the big push will come in two years when we have a Democratic President and then... then we will see a big big push for the voice of “the people”. Whenever anyone talks about elections as being the voice of “the people” what they are really saying is the voice of “the money.” We have a good system here and in a lot of other states that have adopted The Missouri Plan. Do not let money take over our judgeships. If we put these guys up for election we are further undermining a system which we simply cannot afford.