Judicial selection in Kansas
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The seven members of the Kansas Supreme Court are selected using a commission-selection, political appointment method. The same system and the same commission picks the twelve judges who rule from the Kansas Court of Appeals. The commission that makes recommendations is called the Kansas Supreme Court Nominating Commission. It includes nine members who give a slate to the Governor of Kansas of potential political appointees both to the Kansas Supreme Court and the state's Court of Appeals.
The committee is composed of:
- Four members who are non-attorneys who are appointed by the governor.
- Four lawyers who are picked to be on the commission by other lawyers in each of the state's congressional districts.
- A chair, who is a lawyer elected by other lawyers in a statewide vote in which only lawyers are allowed to participate.
In seventeen of the districts, judges are also commission-selected and then politically appointed. In fourteen of the districts, judges are elected by voters.
Retention votes
After a judge or justice has been appointed to the court, he or she serves a short term followed by a retention election. The first retention vote takes place at the first general election in the state that is scheduled after the justice or judge has served at least one full year. After the first retention vote, justices and appellate judges are subject to a retention vote every six years thereafter.
History of Kansas judicial selection
Until 1958, judges in Kansas were elected by popular vote, with the governor having the right to appoint judges to the court when a vacancy occurred between the state's regularly scheduled elections. Popular outrage over what is known as the Triple Play of 1956 led to the Kansas legislature placing a constitutional amendment on the 1958 ballot that set up the current commission-selection, political-appointment method of judge selection, where it was approved by a wide margin. The Kansas Bar Association lobbied heavily for the reform for several years before it finally was enacted.
Criticism of selection process
Stephen Ware, a law professor at the University of Kansas, is a critic of the way judges are selected through the SCNC. In November 2007, he presented an academic report regarding what he sees as the flaws in the process of choosing judges in current use in Kansas.[1] Ware writes, "Kansas is the only state in the union that gives the members of its bar majority control over the selection of state supreme court justices. The bar consequently may have more control over the judiciary in Kansas than in any other state." He proposes a series of reforms which he says would "reduce the amount of control exercised by the bar and establish a more public system of checks and balances".
His objections can be summarized as:
- When the SCNC chooses a slate of judges for the governor to make a final selection from, their votes are conducted in secret.
- Although the SCNC is said to be non-partisan, the historical record is that governors appoint to the commission members who are sympathetic to their political ideologies, often selecting commission members who are distinctly partisan.
- From 1987-2007, governors appointed 22 people to the SCNC. In every case, when a governor appointed a member of the commission, that appointee was a member of the governor's own political party.
- This has resulted in nominations of justices to the Kansas Supreme Court who are themselves partisan.
- From 1987-2007, eleven new justices were appointed to the court. Nine of the eleven belonged to the same political party as the governor who appointed them.
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