Electing Kansas Supreme Court justices would turn them into politicians, too | Opinion

Our state supreme court justices play a critical role in ensuring the fair and efficient administration of justice in Kansas, so the way in which we select those justices is vitally important. Today, and since the late 1950s, Kansas has selected state supreme court justices using a nonpartisan, merit-based selection process. On Aug. 4, we’ll be voting on whether to amend our state constitution to require our state supreme court justices to be popularly elected.

As a former law clerk to three federal judges, including one appellate judge, I have a unique perspective into the work of a judge. With that perspective in mind, I can say with confidence that electing our state supreme court justices would result in a far less efficient judiciary and a waste of our taxpayer dollars.

Electing judges is a very bad idea for a variety of reasons, including the fact that judicial candidates would have to run campaigns to get elected. Judicial candidates need money to win elections, so those running must take money from, and will be beholden to, wealthy donors. That’s bad enough. But judicial candidates also need time to win elections — time to campaign. Think about how spending time on a campaign would affect the work of our sitting supreme court justices who must run for reelection.

There are seven justices on our Kansas Supreme Court, and for every case before the court, all seven justices must do the following: hear the attorneys’ oral arguments, read the parties’ briefs, review the underlying trial transcripts, conduct research on the legal issues and draft judicial opinions that ultimately become the law of the (Kansas) land. That’s the work appellate judges do every day — they decide cases. But that work would grind to a halt the moment a sitting justice has to hit the campaign trail.

Winning a statewide election in Kansas requires a candidate to give stump speeches, attend county fairs, knock doors and talk to voters in all parts of the state. Campaigning for state office is literally a full-time job. And that statewide campaigning must start early — at least a year before the election. So, that election year, every day a sitting justice spends campaigning is a day that justice is not spending doing the work for which we pay them — to decide cases.

Keep in mind, all seven justices hear every case (called en banc review), which means all seven justices must be present in one place, at the same time, to hear oral arguments. Oral arguments usually occur in Topeka. Under the proposed amendment, supreme court justices would be elected every six years, and the elections would be staggered. That means each year, at least one sitting justice likely would be campaigning across Kansas — meaning each year, we’d effectively be down a justice. Imagine scheduling and the resulting docket backlogs and case bottlenecks, which surely would ripple down to our lower courts. As they say, justice delayed is justice denied. An inefficient judiciary is bad for Kansans.

Also, every election year, we taxpayers would continue to pay the campaigning justice’s salary during their campaign. Kansas Supreme Court justices make $226,600 a year. As such, during election season, we Kansans would be paying justices to campaign, when we should be paying them to decide cases. Also consider who else might be on our payroll during campaign season — might a sitting justice take their law clerk to a campaign event? Sounds reasonable to me. If so, we’d also be paying that law clerk’s salary to attend that campaign event. This is wasteful spending, and not where I want my tax dollars to go.

Our state supreme court justices should be focused on quickly and efficiently resolving legal cases, not spending time campaigning across Kansas. If the proposed constitutional amendment passes, the result would be a far less efficient judiciary and a waste of taxpayer money. Plus, we already vote to retain our justices every six years. I want my courts efficient and my tax dollars spent wisely, so I’ll be voting no on Aug. 4.

Amii Castle is a professor at the University of Kansas, where she teaches at the law and business schools. Amii also teaches constitutional law in KU’s political science department. Before teaching, she practiced law in downtown Kansas City and was a law clerk for three federal judges.