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.

Book Review 12: "The Lincoln Lawyer"

The Lincoln Lawyer
Michael Connelly
Warner Books
508 Pages

Every once in a while daddy needs to read a little trash. While I am hesitant to buy books like this in hard back there really is nothing else like a hold in one hand paperback page turner. Soooo...it was Mogerman’s fault that I read this. Let me start by saying that and so absolve myself from the guilty pleasure of michael Connelly’s book. I was not formerly familiar with his work and this book will not really force me to go seek him out but this was a fun read. It was reccomended on the basis of the premise that this lawyer out in LA had no office but practiced out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car. He had a driver, who was a former client partially working off a debt and an ex wife to took messages and handled his books. It sounded...intruiging.

Sadly...it was intuiging. The protagonist Michael Haller is a criminal lawyer with a daughter and two ex wives and all three still love him...and he them. There is some seediness involved in his practice. Drug dealers, murderers, motercycle gang members, prostitutes with hearts of gold...the whole nine yards. A lot of it is trite and simple and frankly that is what makes it works. I am not a reader of Crime or Detective or Mystery or whatever you call this genre but it hooks you in pretty good early and then takes you for a ride....in this case in a Lincoln Town Car. The characters in the book are simply drawn but generally believable and likable.

Haller is a classic lost middle aged man who is unsure of his calling but too busy to think too much about it. Early on in the book he gets hooked up with a “Franchise” case. A rich guy who is accused of trying to murder (afting beating her) a prostitute. The client in the beginning appears to be hapless, somewhat pathetic scion of a reach domineering mother in the real estate business but as the character develops the readers view of him changes slowly and then on accelerating curve as you see him as a soul less, amoral source of almost unbelievable evil. The transformation is handeled well and just being in this guys orbit starts to screw with our heros life in a main way. In the end evil is stymied and a new slightly unexpected evil is just plain shot dead.

One of the over arching themes of the book is the typical quandery of a criminal lawyer. How can you do this? How can you represent people who you know are evil? While our guy starts strong and brusque regarding peoples constitutional rights and how he is a needed check and balance in the system by the end he...and the reader are questioning whether ALL people are really entitled to a defense and whether some people are so evil that vigilante justice is really the only “right” result. Our protagonist the defense lawyer (hero?) is excited about the money he will make but as the case goes on the money becomes not so important when faced with the safety of those he loves and perhaps... on a larger scale his own soul come into play. Finally the book is about choices and about redemption and though they are big picture things they are not given big picture treatment. As far as good, evil, having a conscience and building meaningful relationships and leading a meaningful life....this is the MTV version. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

There are many plot twists and turns and keeps the interest throughout it’s almost 500 paper back pages. It is reasonably hard to put down as if you read it every night before bed (as I do) you go to bed each night thinking things are not as they seem and focusing on yet another twist and wondering where it will take you. The important thing about “The Lincoln Lawyer” and I assume other books of the genre is that even when it seems hopeless...you know in your heart it is going to end well. Sometimes you need that. This one should be made into a movie.