Say no to undermining Wyoming’s independent judiciary

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ecent news articles reported that some legislators want to change Wyoming’s process for choosing judges from a merit-based process to an elected one.  This proposal is difficult to understand, because, frankly, our process works very well.  It is merit based, takes input from both legal professionals and community representatives, and removes bias and partisan leanings from the selection criteria.  The only reason to change our process would be to create a new system that is not based on merit but is instead based on something else.  This is a bad idea and would result in a worse, less professional judiciary.

Wyoming’s judicial selection process works well precisely because it is merit-based.  Under the Wyoming Constitution, the Governor is limited in who he can appoint to the bench.  A judicial nominating committee, consisting of both practicing attorneys and public representatives, is responsible for collecting applications, interviewing potential judges, and forwarding a list of three names for each judicial vacancy to the Governor.  There is no campaigning and no partisanship when it comes to the selection of judges.  Our Constitution purposefully excludes political considerations from the process.  It recognizes that judges must be independent of those pressures, and features a system specifically designed to find the most qualified candidates.

The proposed changes would do away with the benefits of our existing system and introduce a far worse one.  In fact, the proposed changes would revert to a system that was already abandoned as being inferior to the one we currently operate under.  Approximately fifty years ago, Wyoming citizens amended our state constitution to do away with judicial elections and instead adopted the merit-based system described above.  

This most difficult thing to understand about this proposal is the “why.”  Our judges do good work and our selection process has produced quality nominees.  The only reason that has been raised to justify a change is that certain legislators dislike certain recent rulings.  They believe they can obtain judgments more favorable to their preferences if judges had to campaign for election.  Simply put, they want to reduce the independence of the judiciary and make judges more political. 

Asking judges to run for election is a bad idea for several reasons.  The most apparent is the potential for conflicts of interest.  Elections cost money.  If we ask judges to run for election, they will have to ask others for political
donations to fund those campaigns.  The potential for conflict in these situations is obvious.  Judges may feel that they owe something to those who contributed to them, or those appearing before them may feel that they have better odds of prevailing should they contribute to the judge’s campaign fund.  It is common to hear stories from states with judicial elections of judges calling attorneys for contributions, or of attorneys speculating on who gave the judge the largest donation and therefore has the upper hand in the lawsuit.  Even if baseless, these questions undermine confidence in the judiciary and its impartiality.  

Further, campaigns take time and many otherwise qualified people do not want to go through the time and expense of a political campaign.  Asking judges to campaign for office necessarily requires that they take time that they may have otherwise spent working on cases and instead spend that time acting like a political candidate.  This would likely result in both a slow-down in judicial work during election season and a reduction in the number of qualified people willing to undertake the role.  Again, our system is made worse, not better by this proposal.

It is important to remember that the vast majority of cases are not the headline-grabbing decisions that we hear about most.  Judges spend their days on criminal matters both large and small, divorces, custody cases, business disputes, personal injury lawsuits, probate hearings, and countless other matters that are necessary for our world to operate.  That is the real work of our judicial system.  We should not ignore the need for quality judges to decide these cases.  

Simply put, our system for selecting judges works.  We should not change it.  Our judges are selected by merit for their abilities, and political considerations are kept out of the process.  That is as it should be.  We must have confidence in our judicial branch to be able to decide disputes without worrying about whether their decision would hurt a potential reelection campaign.  Judges are insulated from these outside pressures for a reason, and we should continue to uphold that protection.  Let’s hope that our legislature recognizes the importance of an independent judiciary and spends their time tackling the real issues Wyoming faces.