Litigation

Ethics Commission Rejects Complaint Against MO Bar

By Peter Hardin

The Missouri Ethics Commission has dismissed an ethics complaint against the Missouri Bar by James Harris, the leader of a challenge to the merit system that the state uses to select many of its judges.

Harris’s complaint alleged the Bar should educate?not advocate for or against a political position?and had spent large sums to campaign against proposals by Harris? group, ShowMe Better Courts. That group wants to move toward direct election of appellate judges.

However, the Ethics Commission said the Bar’s costs had not reached the thresholds at which campaign finance law requires reporting of expenditures, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

Missouri Bar president Skip Walther said, ?In finding the complaint unsubstantiated, the commission apparently saw the Bar?s activity as consistent with its mission for the last 70 years of educating the public about the benefits of judicial merit selection and the Missouri Non Partisan Court Plan.”

Critics are working for a ballot initiative to replace Missouri’s system for selecting appellate and state Supreme Court judges with competitive elections. You can read more about the controversy in Gavel Grab, and you can read about appointment and retention systems like Missouri?s on Justice at Stake?s issues page about them.

Full post as published by The Gavel on June 12, 2010 (boomark / email).