I’ve heard the argument from several directions that we shouldn’t change our state’s Supreme Court selection process, because the current Kansas supreme court method is “fair, impartial, and non-political”. But is this actually true? Let’s look at a few details:
- Supreme Court candidates are selected by a board of five lawyers, elected by other lawyers in the state, and four gubernatorial appointees. [1] Thus we have a solid majority NOT elected by the voters-at-large, or even appointed by an official they have selected— it is purely an internal vote among the attorneys in the state. The other four members are explicitly political appointees.
- Attorneys, the only people who can vote for 5/9 of the selection board members, are strongly dominated by one side of the political spectrum— essentially a permanent guarantee of a single party’s political control. This isn’t just an activist talking point: prestigious entities such as Harvard’s Journal of Legal Analysis [2] and the American Bar Association [3] have studied the question, and concluded that the legal profession has a solid majority of left-leaning and Democrat views. The Journal study stated that “some 62 percent of the sample of attorneys are positioned to the left of the midpoint”, and the Bar Association article is titled “Is BigLaw mostly liberal? SCOTUS amicus briefs indicate answer is yes, especially in significant cases”.
Even if you agree with some recent court decisions, is it not troubling that we have handed over total control of Kansas’s highest court, and thus total control of state law, to a body permanently controlled by one political party— regardless of any future change in voter sentiment? At a minimum, this shows that the current court makeup is not impartial or non-political.
The fact that we have a Democrat governor but a Republican legislature shows that we live in a closely divided state where both parties have significant support, and the voters’ will might change from election cycle to election cycle. With an elected court, Kansas voters would have the power to change the court periodically to align with their views— a chance that Kansas voters do not have under the current system.
Thus, I strongly encourage my fellow Kansas to vote YES on the upcoming Kansas Elections for Supreme Court Justices Amendment on August 4th.
References:
[1] https://kscourts.gov/Judges/Become-a-Judge/Supreme-Court-Nominating-Commission
[2] https://academic.oup.com/jla/article/8/2/277/2502548?login=false