Tuesday,
Nov. 4th was Election Day and specifically Amendment 2 passed by a
huge majority. If you are a regular
reader of this blog you know that I wrote about Amendment 2 several months ago
saying that it was going to be bad.
Despite the outcome of last Tuesday I feel the same way today. In case you didn’t read my previous blog post
about Amendment 2 I will summarize.
Amendment 2 is bad because it removes the current method of judicial
selection which has the appellate and Supreme Court level judiciary appointed
by a nomination committee. The Judicial
Nomination Committee was good because it left much of the power to appoint judges,
to the higher levels of the court system, with individuals within the court system. Now, however, we have approved an amendment
which leaves the appointment of the appellate and Supreme Court in the hands of
the governor, approval by the legislation and a retainment election by the
people every 8 years.
Our
constitution previously stated that the Supreme Court was supposed to be
elected by the people. Now, many of us
can see how that could be a problem because it would not insulate the judiciary
from the political arena. The previous
process allowed for the retainment election every 8 years, which everyone
claimed was enough to meet the requirement that the people had decided on their
judiciary. Personally, I do not believe
that a retainment election meets the language of “elected by the people”, but
then again, I do not want the Supreme Court to be elected by the people. The current process is going to do twice as
much damage though. The people, which
the constitution states should make the decision, still don’t get the vote but
the judiciary is no more insulated from the political arena. Instead of being approved by a group of many
different people, candidates will now be approved by a much smaller body of
highly political individuals who will sway their appointment decisions in any
which way suits them at the moment. I do
not have a solution to the problem but I do not think amendment 2 was a wise
amendment.
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