Litigation

Merit Selection (I): Shift Proposed in MT

By Peter Hardin

To protect judicial impartiality, retired Chief Justice Karla Grey says she will propose to the Montana legislature that it switch from nonpartisan election of judges to a merit selection plan.

?The election process is tainted once it becomes a political race,? Justice Gray said at a public forum, according to a Billings Gazette article. ?I think the worst thing about judicial elections is the money. It’s essentially a popularity contest and a money contest.?

Said a civil litigator, Randy Cox, ?In order to have good judges, we have to move them away from politics and not into politics.”

Also at the forum, Hofstra law professor James Sample pointed out that it has been a quarter century since a state switched to the merit system. Nevada voters rejected such a shift on Election Day.

?The primary focus needs to be on improving the system we have,? he said.

Last summer, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor visited Montana and urged citizens to scrap its nonpartisan election plan for one that places judges on the bench through merit selection. Such a system protects judicial impartiality while providing for accountability, she said.

It would take a constitutional amendment to change the way Montana elects its judges, and a Billings Gazette article at the time of Justice O’Connor’s visit said such a plan “may be a tough sell.” That article examined the history of Montana’s current system and discussed pros and cons of merit selection.

You can learn more about merit selection from Justice at Stake’s issues page on the topic.

Full post as published by The Gavel on November 17, 2010 (boomark / email).