The Missouri House has announced the formation of a Special Standing Committee on Judicial Reform. The committee will be responsible for working on important reforms that will help improve Missouri’s courts.

The committee is chaired by Rep. Jason Smith, and the vice-chair is Rep. Doug Funderburk. The other members of the committee include Rep. Sue Allen, Rep. Michael Brown, Rep. Susan Carlson, Rep. Mike Colona, Rep. Kathie Conway, Rep. Stanley Cox, Rep. David Day, Rep. Don Gosen, Rep. Chris Kelly, Rep. Mike Lair, Rep. Rodney Schad, Rep. Clem Smith, and Rep. Zachary Wyatt.

Better Courts for Missouri thanks Speaker Steven Tilley and House leadership for putting together this committee to look at new reforms that will improve our judiciary.

Today at 10:30 a.m., Chief Justice Richard Teitelman will deliver the annual State of the Judiciary address to the Missouri General Assembly.

“The events of 2011 have called the competence and integrity of our state’s judicial branch into question, and I hope that Chief Justice Teitelman will use this opportunity to reflect on how he can help make 2012 better for our courts and our state,” said James Harris. “There are real problems in our judiciary – in the general attitude and direction of the court, in the decisions that have caused our state to once again be named to the American Tort Reform Association’s list of Dishonorable Mentions, and in the Appellate Apportionment Commission’s frankly bizarre actions during the redistricting process, among many others – and they need to be addressed. The court has taken some small steps to fix some of these problems, but more work needs to be done.”

“Chief Justice Teitelman has an opportunity to get started today by addressing one of the most stubborn problems with our judicial branch – the complete lack of transparency,” continued Harris. “Despite the clear transparency requirements of the Sunshine Law and Supreme Court Operating Rule 20, our judiciary regularly attempts to use loopholes and custom-made rules to bypass public oversight on issues as important as redistricting and judicial selection. The judiciary is important because it is here to serve all Missourians, not just judges and attorneys. I hope that Chief Justice Teitelman will take this opportunity to address the court’s persistent transparency problems and announce a plan to ensure full compliance with Missouri’s Sunshine Law. I also hope that, unlike his predecessors, Chief Justice Teitelman will not lobby against changes that will improve our courts.”

Today, the Supreme Court released a per curiam decision on State ex rel. Molly Teichman v. Robin Carnahan, et al., a case seeking to nullify the State Senate maps filed by the Appellate Apportionment Commission. The Supreme Court sustained the petition, overturning both Senate maps and restarting the Senate apportionment process. In the decision, the Supreme Court acknowledges that the Appellate Apportionment Commission made huge errors when drawing the Senate maps, including ignoring the constitutional requirements of Article III, Section 7, and going above and beyond their clearly-defined constitutional authority by reconvening and submitting a replacement Senate map

“This decision illustrates that the Missouri Plan does not truly result in the appointment of the most competent judges in our state. If it did, this mess would not have happened. Any layman’s reading of the Constitution makes it clear that the map violated Article III, Section 7 of the Constitution,” said James Harris.

He continued, “The six judges on the Appellate Apportionment Commission are supposed to be among the best and brightest legal minds in our state. They are just one step below the Supreme Court, and indeed two of them have been nominated to fill Supreme Court vacancies in the past. However, during the redistricting process they demonstrated what is either a callous disregard for the provisions of our Constitution or a level of incompetence unbecoming of any judge. This is an embarrassment to our judiciary.”

Today, Senator Jim Lembke filed two bills that would place judicial selection reform on the ballot in November 2012. The two bills – SJR41 and SJR42 – would eliminate the Missouri Plan, which allows a committee dominated by trial lawyer interests to exercise control over the judicial selection process, and replace it with one of two alternate plans.

SJR41 would implement non-partisan judicial elections, allowing residents of each judicial circuit or appellate district to elect their own judges. In addition, it would allow each of Missouri’s eight congressional districts to elect one judge to the Missouri Supreme Court. A single Supreme Court judge would be appointed by the Governor with the advice and consent of the Senate.

SJR42 would replace the Missouri Plan with a judicial selection system based on the federal model. Under the plan proposed by the bill, all judges currently chosen via the Missouri Plan would be appointed directly by the Governor, taking office once approved by the Senate.

Both of these bills would help Missourians take control of our courts by introducing accountability to judicial selection. By removing the influence trial attorneys currently exercise over the Missouri Plan, both SJR41 and SJR42 would ensure our state’s courts are dedicated to serving all Missourians, not just the special interests that have infiltrated the Appellate Judicial Commission.

The American Tort Reform Foundation has given Missouri’s appellate courts and Supreme Court “dishonorable mention” status in their 2011-2012 Judicial Hellholes Report. The case that earned our courts this status was a large class-action settlement from last year that earned the attorneys $21 million fees and an additional $600,000 in expenses (all taken out of a total of $26 million in cash awarded via the case), while the plaintiffs will each receive only about $20 and three coupons worth just over $8 each.

Instead of doing the right thing and demanding a settlement that is more equitable for the plaintiffs, an intermediate appellate court approved the settlement and the Missouri Supreme Court refused to take up the case, giving a tacit endorsement of this shameful lawsuit that did little but enrich a group of trial attorneys at the expense of their own clients.

Missouri’s courts are no stranger to the Judicial Hellholes Report. In both the 2007 and 2008-2009 reports, Missouri’s Supreme Court was put on the list of dishonorable mentions for irresponsible decisions that put trial attorney interests ahead of common sense.

Our courts will not change until our state adopts a judicial selection process that emphasizes transparency and accountability. To eliminate the danger of these ludicrous lawsuits and ensure truly just decisions - not trial attorney paydays - are the focus of our legal system, Missourians must take back our courts.

Associate Circuit Judge Barbara T. Peebles, who was appointed in September 2000 to the 22nd Judicial Circuit of St. Louis by Governor Mel Carnahan and retained in 2010 with 74.9% of the vote, is now the subject of an investigative piece by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Judge Peebles took a vacation to China from October 11 through October 21, but before leaving she failed to pass along all items in her docket for other judges to handle, passing along only the responsibility of hearing cases of recently-arrested inmates. All other cases were left to her clerks, who are not attorneys and are not qualified to carry out judicial decisions. In all, the Post-Dispatch found that clerks had handled at least 350 cases during her absence, including the dismissal of five cases and filing paperwork to issue 18 arrest warrants. In addition, over 300 other cases were moved to later dates without an opportunity for the cases to be heard earlier by another judge.

While this would be horrible enough if it were an isolated incident, the Post-Dispatch found that Judge Peebles had frequently passed on judicial responsibilities to her clerks, noting that several attorneys expressed that “it was common knowledge that Peebles’ clerks made decisions.” Mary Fox, the head of the St. Louis public defender’s office, was quoted as saying, “It was typical for the clerk to announce ‘capias’ (arrest warrant) or ‘dismissed’ in the courtroom without the judge present, even when the judge was in town.”

When confronted with the problem, the court chose to essentially sweep it under the rug. As the Post-Dispatch notes, “Ohmer [the presiding judge of the circuit] said he considered – but decided against – removing Peebles from that division [the 25th, which handles criminal cases during their initial stages] after the full scale of the problem was revealed. It would be the kind of action he said has not happened in 30 years. Next month, she will move to a civil trial division as planned.” Essentially, the court is letting Peebles go without any punishment because her actions were so outrageous that they would require a punishment that hasn’t been used in three decades, and they hope that switching her to a new division will alleviate the problem.

We have the Missouri Plan to thank for this situation. Despite being the lowest-rated judge in our state during the 2006 retention elections and receiving markedly low scores in 2010, Peebles has been consistently retained with a landslide. Clearly, fundamental changes need to be made to the judicial selection system to increase transparency and accountability. Otherwise, our state will continue to be subjected to judges like Judge Peebles.

Senator Jason Crowell has pre-filed SJR37, a bill which will require all apportionment commissions (including the court-appointed Appellate Apportionment Commission) to abide by the transparency requirements of Missouri’s Sunshine Law.

The Appellate Apportionment Commission’s controversial decision to conduct only one open hearing on the state legislative maps – coupled with the haphazard manner in which the constitutionally-troubled Senate map was drawn, rescinded, and re-drawn – has put the issue of judicial transparency front-and-center during the upcoming legislative session.

Not only did the members of the commission choose to conduct all but one meeting in secret using a loophole allowing for “executive meetings” as their excuse, they have repeatedly refused to provide public access to documentation from the meetings despite receiving numerous sunshine requests. In a response to a sunshine request submitted by Better Courts for Missouri, the Supreme Court even claimed to be unsure as to who the custodian of records for the Appellate Apportionment Commission might be.

The behavior of the judges of the Appellate Apportionment Commission is a clear demonstration of why our courts should heed both Court Operating Rule 20 and the Sunshine Law and open these important proceedings to the public. Missourians have a right to see the process that will determine our legislative maps for the next decade, and we applaud Senator Jason Crowell for sponsoring legislation that will force the court to recognize this right.

Better Courts for Missouri encourages you to read this interesting piece from Professor Stephen J. Ware of the University of Kansas’ School of Law that was published in the Missouri Law Review. In this paper, Professor Ware outlines why the Missouri Plan is the most elitist, undemocratic way to select judges in the nation.

Whereas other systems like judicial elections or the federal model of judicial appointment allow the people to have a clear voice in the selection process, either through elected representatives or directly, the Missouri Plan offers no such opportunity. Instead, the one elected representative who has any role in the appointment process, the governor, is forced to pick from a small panel of choices approved by the completely unaccountable Appellate Judicial Commission or similar district commissions.

In effect, the governor’s (and, by extension, the public’s) role in the process is thereby diminished – no matter what problem there might be with the potential judges on the panel, there is no option to choose someone who is not on the list or even to simply request a new list from which to choose. This creates a fundamental problem with the system, as Ware notes that “the Missouri Plan gives the commission more power to force one of its favorites on the democratically elected officials” (Page 760). The most common way for the commission to do this is by making their chosen nominee the only real choice for the governor to appoint, offering two entirely unpalatable nominees as the only other members of the panel.

The only way for Missourians to exercise any control over the judiciary is through largely ineffective retention elections that have no bearing on the selection process. These elections only give the public the option to remove judges from the court after they have already been appointed and have served for at least a year.

Our courts should work for the people, not for the small elitist group that controls judicial selection under the current version of the Missouri Plan. This is why Better Courts for Missouri urges you to help us push for real changes that will bring transparency and accountability to Missouri’s judicial selection process.

In what can only be described as a stunning display of incompetence, the panel of judges responsible for drawing Missouri’s legislative maps has effectively admitted that the original Senate map released on November 30 is unconstitutional by withdrawing that map and replacing it with a new map today.

Both the House and Senate maps were suddenly removed from the Office of Administration website on December 9, prompting speculation that the maps would be redrawn. A new Senate map was reposted just hours later along with the original House map, accompanied by a press release from the Appellate Apportionment Commission stating that “a majority of the Commission opted to revise the plan upon further consideration of a constitutional provision regarding multi-district counties, even though that provision may not apply to redistricting maps drawn by the appellate judges.”

“Incompetent is the word that comes to mind when thinking of the Appellate Apportionment Commission’s actions. The sheer audacity of their press release – especially the claim that they apparently believe the constitution ‘may not apply’ to them, but that they will play along anyway and revise the map – is stupefying. Any layman can read Article III, Section 7 of Missouri’s constitution and determine that the original map was blatantly unconstitutional, no matter who draws the map,” said James Harris.

He continued, “These judges are supposed to be among the best legal minds in our state, yet they appear to have either misread or forgotten about a key constitutional requirement when they were drawing the original maps. So many counties were split into multiple districts in clear disregard of the language in Article III, Section 7, and it is amazing that it took until now for them to correct their mistake. I can think of no better example of why we need to change the Missouri Plan than the sheer ineptitude demonstrated by the six judges on the Appellate Apportionment Commission.”

Better Courts for Missouri has submitted an open records request under Missouri’s Sunshine Law asking the Appellate Apportionment Commission – the group constitutionally empowered to draw Missouri’s legislative district map that will be used for the next decade – to provide any minutes, meeting agendas, and notes for meetings of the Commission.

For several weeks, the Appellate Apportionment Commission has been ignoring consistent inquiries from interested Missourians and from the press, drawing the controversial new legislative maps well out of the public eye. The Appellate Apportionment Commission has closed all but one hearing to the public, classifying every other meeting as an “executive meeting” in order to use a questionable constitutional loophole to avoid compliance with the Sunshine Law.

However, both the Sunshine Law and Supreme Court Operating Rule 20 are very clear – the Appellate Apportionment Commission should be open to the public. Supreme Court Operating Rule 20.02, subsection F, states that “any committee appointed by or reporting to the Supreme Court, operating in an administrative capacity and not in a judicial capacity” must comply with all transparency requirements.

It is our hope that the Appellate Apportionment Commission will lift the veil of secrecy surrounding their operations and acknowledge their obligation to open their records and, in the future, their meetings to the public.

When the courts are put in charge of something as critical as the reapportionment process, Missourians need to be able to exercise our right to transparency. Anytime the court chooses to operate in secret, the public is left with no other recourse than to wonder what they are hiding.

The Columbia Daily Tribune reports that the Appellate Apportionment Commission (the panel of judges put in charge of drawing our state House and Senate apportionment maps) has chosen to close their meetings to public oversight, giving Missourians only a single open public hearing to have our voice heard.

As the Commission has done in the past, they cited a constitutional provision allowing an unlimited number of closed “executive meetings” as the reason they feel they do not have to hold public meetings, instead classifying all but one hearing as an “executive meeting” to get around Missouri’s open meetings law.

Missourians deserve the opportunity to get a full picture of how our state’s House and Senate districts are being drawn. These district lines will shape our government for the next decade, and voters have the right and the responsibility to ensure they are being drawn in a fair manner.

Both the Sunshine Law (Chapter 610 RSMo) and the Supreme Court Rule regarding Transparency (Rule 20) are very clear that the court’s functions should be open to the public. Indeed, Rule 20.02, subsection F, states that “any committee appointed by or reporting to the Supreme Court, operating in an administrative capacity and not in a judicial capacity” should comply with the Court’s transparency requirements and be open to the public. To use an “executive meeting” loophole to avoid transparency is a disservice to our state.

Unfortunately, standing in the way of transparency is nothing new for our state’s judicial branch – the Columbia Missourian did a story about the Court’s refusal to adhere to the Sunshine Law in April of 2009.

This consistent lack of transparency erodes public confidence in the process. Our courts should have nothing to hide, and Better Courts for Missouri hopes they will embrace transparency and open the Appellate Apportionment Commission’s meetings.

Since the beginning of May, over $955,000 in monetary and in-kind contributions has flowed to Governor Nixon’s campaign account from trial attorney firms. Of this money, over $500,000 came in between June 20 and June 30. To receive over $900,000 from just one small group in such a short amount of time is almost unheard of, and to receive over half that amount during an eleven-day span is almost incomprehensible.

On April 29, just before the first contributions started rolling in, Governor Nixon vetoed Senate Bill 188, a bill that would have put Missouri’s employment laws back in line with national standards and made it harder for frivolous lawsuits to be filed by disgruntled employees. With Governor Nixon’s veto, these protections were not put into law and trial attorneys are still free to initiate costly, unnecessary lawsuits against Missouri employers.

“Clearly, trial attorneys are very happy with Governor Nixon’s actions in relation to recent legislative attempts to discourage frivolous lawsuits. Ever since the veto of SB188, money for the Governor’s re-election campaign has been pouring in from trial attorneys, both from within the state and from lawsuit-heavy states like New York and Illinois. Sometimes, it seems like a week doesn’t go by without another $5,000+ contribution report being filed by the Governor showing yet another large trial attorney contribution. Our state deserves better than this – we need to have bills like SB188 signed into law, not vetoed for political gain,” said James Harris.

Many Democrat legislators have been vocal about the state redistricting process, alleging that Missouri’s courts are not doing a good job drawing the district boundaries to adequately reflect our state’s population.

The negative impact of using the Missouri Plan to appoint judges is something Better Courts for Missouri is very familiar with. This development begs a question: Will some of these legislators agree to join Better Courts for Missouri in calling for changes to the judicial selection process?

Judicial reform is non-partisan, and always has been. The effort first started in the 1980s with Democrat Sue Shear, and has continued with Missourians of all political ideologies. We hope that these legislators, after encountering how ineffective and political our courts have become, will join the judicial reform effort in 2012 and help to make judicial selection more transparent and more accountable.

Notorious liberal Dylan Ratigan, host of an afternoon show on MSNBC, devoted a blog post and part of his show today to a defense of the Missouri Plan.

Citing reports from the liberal, George Soros-funded group Justice at Stake, Ratigan railed against attempts to change the Missouri Plan, insisting that putting an unaccountable group of “experts” – really political cronies and liberal trial attorneys – in charge of judicial selection is the best way to pick the judges who will serve us, pointing to retention elections as a source of public accountability.

It is not surprising to hear this same tired line coming from a liberal. The truth of the matter is this – retention elections are not an adequate form of accountability. By removing public influence over the judicial appointment process and putting a small group of liberals in charge, the Missouri Plan almost guarantees liberal control of the judiciary.

Better Courts for Missouri needs your help getting out the truth about the Missouri Plan. Powerful liberals like Ratigan and Justice at Stake are using their media soapbox to defend this antiquated, broken system because it is in their political best interests to do so. With your help, we can push for reforms that will help ensure our courts are accountable to Missourians, not to liberal special interest groups.

Missouri gubernatorial candidate Bill Randles, an attorney, has called for a change to the way judges on Missouri’s highest courts are selected, pushing for a switch from the closed, unaccountable Missouri Plan to open elections.

He noted that the Missouri Plan has caused the judiciary to become too isolated from public input, saying, “It becomes a closed system in a closed club, and the result is they become unaccountable. Democracy works in the open for everything else, why do we think it won’t work for judges?” Randles also pointed out a fundamental problem with the current retention vote system, saying, “Right now, everybody votes blind. I practiced law 20 years, I voted blind on most judicial retention votes. A blind vote is not democracy.”

This is one of the main problems with using retention elections and a commission-based appointment system instead of normal, contested elections. Because of the way the Missouri Plan is structured, the appointment process is walled off from average Missourians and is instead dominated by small interest groups like the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys. Voters have no input over who is actually selected to serve in our courts, and they are not able to utilize retention elections to exercise an adequate amount of accountability over the court. This lack of input causes the courts to stray from the public interest, and it is part of the reason so few voters know their judges.

Additionally, since there is no opponent in retention elections, there is no incentive for anyone to publicize the judges’ records. Even the Bar’s feeble attempt at informing voters with their pre-election ratings fails – during the last election, they recommended one particularly incompetent judge not be retained, but this judge was retained with a vote margin very similar to that received by our state’s best judges.

Clearly, changes need to be made to ensure our courts serve the interests of all Missourians. Our state’s voters need to be able to exercise more accountability over our courts, and the judicial selection system needs to be much more transparent.

You can read more about Randles' statements at PoliticMO.

“Today’s Supreme Court panel proves that being a former President of the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys pays off,” said James Harris, Executive Director of Better Courts for Missouri. “MATA nominated one of their own, Judge Michael Manners, to the three person panel of nominees to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Michael Wolff.”

He continued, “It is no secret that MATA has controlled the Appellate Judicial Commission for years. The organization actively campaigned for current Commission member Nancy Mogab, a former member of the MATA Board of Governors. Another Commission member, John Wooddell, is a current member of the Board of Governors. Jill Shurin, who continues to serve on the Commission despite her term having expired December 31, 2010, is married to prominent trial attorney Leland Shurin, a member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum. MATA’s disproportionate representation on the Appellate Judicial Commission has given them an almost incomprehensible amount of power over the judicial selection process – power which was on full display today.”

Harris continued, “Missourians should be outraged by the rigged panel announced today. Judge Manners’ greatest credential – apparently the outcome-determining credential – is his relationship to a radical group of personal injury attorneys. The appointment of such an activist to our state’s highest court would allow MATA to begin working toward their overall goal – striking down laws like tort reform and workers’ compensation reform that protect our state from the ravages of excess litigation. If Judge Manners is allowed to serve on the Missouri Supreme Court, it will send a clear signal to job creators and investors across the nation that will essentially say ‘Tort Hell: Do Not Invest Here.’ The people of Missouri deserved a panel comprised of the best available judges, not the display of cronyism MATA presented today.”

Better Courts for Missouri urges all supporters of transparency and accountability in the judicial selection process to call the Supreme Court and urge them to allow attendees to record the upcoming interviews for the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Michael Wolff. It is our understanding that the court is still in the process of determining whether they will open the hearings to recordings, so your call can make a real difference.

Missourians deserve to know what goes on during the interview process, but it is not practical for many working people to take off for two days in the middle of the week to exercise our newfound right to transparency. For this reason, it is important that organizations like Better Courts for Missouri be allowed to record the hearings and post the audio or video for the public to examine. If the court truly wants to encourage transparency, they should have no problem allowing recordings of the proceedings to be made public. A ban on recording will mean that the court is only interested in the image of transparency, not the actual concept.

In Iowa, a state which also uses the Missouri Plan for judicial selection, the court has embraced transparency for judicial interviews, allowing the media to record, broadcast, and stream them on the internet per Rule 25 of the Iowa Court Rules. This allows the public to have ready access to information on those who could potentially serve on the Supreme Court, enabling the public to more readily exercise their rights to transparency and accountability. Missouri’s courts would do well to follow the example set by Iowa and allow the upcoming interviews to be recorded.

We hope the Supreme Court will hear our call for true transparency. Missourians deserve to know as much as we can about those who have applied for this vacancy on our highest court. However, many Missourians will be left in the dark about the interviews if we are not able to record them and disseminate the information we gather. We ask all supporters of transparency in the judicial selection process to call the Missouri Supreme Court at 573-751-4144 and ask them to allow Better Courts for Missouri and other educational organizations to record the upcoming Supreme Court interviews.

Better Courts for Missouri is in the process of compiling research on each of the 13 applicants for the Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Michael Wolff. The research we gather will be released before the first public interviews are conducted.

By exposing any bad judicial decisions, controversial statements, or political agendas for each applicant, we can give voters a clearer picture of who actually applies for court vacancies and, ultimately, who is appointed to these vacancies. This will help expose the flaws in the Missouri Plan and aid the public in exercising accountability over the politicians and left-wing interest groups who allow these flaws to continue unabated.

If you have any personal experiences or insights into the applicants, we invite you to share them with us by sending an e-mail to info@newmoplan.com. Your input will help us create a full picture to give to voters before the interviews are conducted.

The Supreme Court has announced the names of the 13 applicants for the Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Michael Wolff. The lackluster number of applicants is a disappointment and serves as a sad commentary on the state of our judiciary – when only 13 individuals in our state can be found to apply for an opening on our highest court, it is obvious there is a problem.

The applicants for the vacancy are: Timothy R. Cisar, Judge George W. Draper III, Gretchen Garrison, Richard A. Gartner, Judge Lisa White Hardwick, Joe D. Jacobson, Paul G. Lane, James R. Layton, Judge Michael W. Manners, Judge Karen King Mitchell, Judge Glenn A. Norton, Judge Mark D. Pfeiffer, and Erwin O. Switzer.

During the coming weeks, we will study any available information about each applicant and release our findings to allow the public to have a better idea of who is applying for this important judicial vacancy. We will also make it a point to attend the interview sessions being held on August 31 and September 1 at the Supreme Court building in Jefferson City and will report on the process. Please keep checking the Better Courts for Missouri homepage for updates.

Better Courts for Missouri would like to remind all who are interested that applications for the Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Michael A. Wolff are due this Friday, July 8 by 5:00 p.m. An electronic copy of the application can be found at the Missouri Courts website.

Interviews of potential candidates will be conducted at the Supreme Court Building in Jefferson City by the Appellate Judicial Commission on Tuesday, August 30 and will continue through Thursday, September 1.

We encourage all qualified attorneys who are committed to upholding the Constitution, not making law, to apply for this important vacancy. It is important that the judges chosen to serve on our state’s highest court are chosen from a field including the most qualified, most committed candidates available.

Better Courts for Missouri certainly agrees with Justice Price’s concerns about the judicial budget: funding issues ought to be a concern. The system’s budget problems have caused cutbacks that strain our courts by asking personnel to do more but earn less. There is no reason that a newly-graduated law student at a law firm should make more than an appellate judge. It encourages the most qualified people to enter the private sector instead of serving the public, and we must certainly work to make sure this situation is resolved and adequate funding is given to the judiciary.

However, the biggest threat to judicial independence in Missouri is not a lack of funds, it is the ongoing domination of the selection process by an extremely powerful and well-financed special interest group – trial lawyers.

As even former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor now openly acknowledges, Missouri is behind the times because our state’s version of the Missouri Plan is too easy to corrupt. Years of operating behind closed doors under the influence of powerful interest groups has resulted in a court that no longer embraces merit, but political and ideological connections. By making minor changes that will increase transparency and allow citizens to exercise more accountability over the judicial selection process, we hope to rectify this situation.

It is truly unfortunate that Chief Justice Price did not take advantage of his tenure as the head of the court to bring the Supreme Court and legal establishment to a more balanced and cooperative position regarding Missouri Plan reforms. Instead, those of us who advocate for reform continue to face the same pattern of obstruction, demagoguery and personal attacks. Better Courts for Missouri will continue to monitor the court’s actions and work to hold the judiciary accountable. We hope that Chief Justice Teitelman will choose to embrace the public’s calls for reform and join us in working to implement changes that will increase openness and accountability in Missouri’s judicial selection system.

Fox News has published an interesting article that investigates and exposes the efforts of liberal financier George Soros to impact policy by using his largesse to support liberal causes. One of his largest endeavors is using his Open Society Institute to fund groups that encourage the use of the Missouri Plan to appoint judges instead of judicial elections.

A spokesman for Justice at Stake, a group which has received millions from the Open Society Institute, told Fox that he only knew of $2 million from OSI that went to groups working in favor of the Missouri Plan, while Fox News found this to be untrue – indeed, they were able to find that “more than $5 million was explicitly earmarked for projects about either ‘merit selection’ or ‘judicial selection.’” Overall, Colleen Pero – author of the American Justice Partnership’s “Justice Hijacked” report – finds that the Open Society Institute has given approximately $45 million in support of efforts to promote the Missouri Plan.

Why is Soros so interested in the Missouri Plan? Colleen Pero told Fox News that Soros is spending these millions of dollars to get more influence over the courts, remarking, “The left can’t get their agenda through the legislatures anymore… so they think they can get their agenda through by taking over the courts.” When public elections are replaced by a private system hinging on nominations by attorney-dominated commissions, our courts move drastically to the left. This is why Missouri needs to make necessary reforms to the Missouri Plan – liberal interest groups are using their dominance of the nominating commission to stack our courts and bend our laws to their will.

The Missouri Supreme Court is now accepting applications to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Michael Wolff. Applications are due by July 8 and can be found at the Missouri Courts website.

The Appellate Judicial Commission will begin interviewing potential candidates for the job Tuesday, August 30 and will continue interviews through Thursday, September 1.

Better Courts for Missouri encourages all qualified attorneys who are committed to upholding the Constitution to apply for this vacancy. We need to ensure that the Appellate Judicial Commission is allowed to choose from a field of many qualified applicants for this important position.

Governor Rick Perry of Texas has signed into law a bill that would create a “loser pays” provision as part of an effort to reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits in the state. “Loser pays” rules are used in many nations around the world, most notably in Britain, and require a plaintiff who files a lawsuit that is found to be frivolous to pay the court costs and attorneys’ fees for the defendant.

Under current law, it is very difficult for defendants to obtain fees from plaintiffs who file groundless lawsuits, so they are often left with the legal bill, even in cases when the lawsuit is obviously filed for no reason other than to provide a windfall to the plaintiff. Unfortunately, a successful defense against a frivolous lawsuit often costs a prohibitive amount of money, so companies choose to settle out of court for thousands of dollars even if a lawsuit is initiated by a plaintiff without any legal standing.

This conundrum has spawned a new breed of lawsuits – frivolous suits aimed to force companies to choose between court costs and a less costly (but still damaging) settlement. Put simply, a cadre of dishonest attorneys has found a way to effectively game the system and abuse tort law for their own enrichment.

“Loser pays” will eliminate these lawsuits by forcing dishonest attorneys and plaintiffs to thoroughly examine if they have a valid cause to initiate a lawsuit before filing one, as any frivolous lawsuit will be thrown out and the plaintiff will be charged for any court costs involved.

Signing “loser pays” into law was a good decision for Texas, and we hope that Missouri will follow suit during the 2012 legislative session.

The Missouri Supreme Court is now accepting applications to fill a vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Michael Wolff, who will be leaving the court August 11. Applications for the vacancy are due by July 8 and the Appellate Judicial Commission will be interviewing potential candidates for the job Tuesday, August 30 through Thursday, September 1.

Better Courts for Missouri encourages all who are interested in the direction of our courts to attend the interview sessions, which have been made public thanks to pressure from judicial reform supporters.

You can read more about the vacancy and the hearings at the Missouri Courts website.

Professor Chris W. Bonneau, who co-authored the book In Defense of Judicial Elections with Professor Melinda Gann Hall, has published a very interesting Washington Post op-ed defending judicial elections. He presents very compelling evidence that having a public voice in the judicial selection process maximizes transparency and accountability, ensuring effective courts that follow the law and the Constitution.

The full text of the article can be found here. We encourage you to read this very interesting op-ed.

Better Courts for Missouri opposes the upcoming confirmation vote of Goodwin Liu, a nominee to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Liu is too far out of the mainstream to be a good choice for a lifetime appointment to an important judicial post.

Liu is an avowed judicial activist, once being quoted as saying, “… it becomes pretty clear why ‘originalism’ or ‘strict construction’ don’t make a lot of sense. The Framers deliberately chose broad words so they would be adaptable over time.” He has a record of defending leftist causes, including “affirmative rights” – a code-word for welfare programs to create a right to education, shelter, and health care. In addition, Mr. Liu vehemently opposed the confirmation of both Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts based on ideological motives, saying that Roberts’ “legal career is studded with activities unfriendly to civil rights, abortion rights, and the environment” and that Alito’s record indicates his view of America “is not the America we know. Nor is it the America we aspire to be.”

Goodwin Liu does not have the qualifications to be a good judge. He doesn’t even meet the standards for ideal federal judges outlined by the American Bar Association, which recommends 12 years’ experience practicing law (he hasn’t even been out of law school for 12 years) and a substantial amount of experience in the courtroom (he has no experience as a trial lawyer). Moreover, 42 of the 58 county district attorneys in California wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee opposing his nomination to the court.

We urge you to call Senators McCaskill (202-224-6154) and Blunt (202-224-5721) and tell them to oppose the confirmation of Goodwin Liu to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is an unabashedly political appointment that will result in yet another activist liberal on one of our most powerful courts.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has voted to approve the HEALTH Act in a 30-20 vote. The HEALTH Act, sponsored by Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA 11), would limit non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits to $250,000, limit contingency fees that can be charged by lawyers in medical malpractice suits, exempt many FDA-approved treatments, and place a three year statute of limitations on medical malpractice suits. It has been announced that a floor vote is likely to take place in June.

Federal medical malpractice reform is badly needed. Our nation suffers from a glut of excess litigation in the medical field, costing us billions of dollars every year, encouraging doctors to retire early, encouraging the irresponsible practice of defensive medicine, and pushing up the cost of care for everyone. Putting these reforms into federal law would do away with a large portion of the frivolous lawsuits that are filed against care providers every year, helping to reduce the tremendous burden of excess medical malpractice suits and lowering the cost of care for everyone.

Better Courts for Missouri urges you to contact your local U.S. Representative and tell them to support the HEALTH Act to help put a lid on out-of-control litigation.

Yesterday, Governor Nixon was forced to withdraw his nomination of trial attorney Thomas Strong to the Coordinating Board for Higher Education after the appointment was blocked by Sen. Kurt Schaefer (R-19).

Thomas Strong is one of the most notorious personal injury attorneys in the state. A member of the elite “Inner Circle of Advocates” organization, he was chosen by then-Attorney General Nixon in a no-bid agreement to represent Missouri in the tobacco lawsuits of the nineties. This arrangement earned him millions in contingency fees from the settlement – millions that would have gone to public coffers if the state had not engaged outside counsel.

Strong, a prominent donor who has given thousands to many Democrat campaigns including over $75,000 to Governor Nixon’s campaign, was nominated to serve on the Coordinating Board for Higher Education as an independent despite his record.

Better Courts for Missouri applauds the Senate for blocking Strong’s nomination.

The Governor has vetoed HB209, a bill sponsored by Rep. Casey Guernsey that was meant to protect Missouri’s family farms from frivolous lawsuits launched by greedy trial attorneys aiming to take advantage of lax nuisance laws to make quick cash.

“Unfortunately, the Governor’s veto of HB209 has opened the door for continued nuisance lawsuits against Missouri’s farms,” said James Harris. “This bill would have given necessary protections to our family farmers, but Governor Nixon chose to ignore the need for reform and allow for even more frivolous lawsuits. He has chosen to put greedy trial attorneys ahead of the people that put food on our tables, and that is shameful.”

Under current law, these attorneys can repeatedly target agricultural producers with multi-million dollar lawsuits, often focusing on farms in areas where suburbs are expanding into the countryside to find plaintiffs who aren’t familiar with the requirements of farming. These suits name regular parts of farming – the smell of animals, dust from cultivation, noise from machinery – as nuisances, essentially giving agricultural producers the choice between continually paying their neighbors in court or shutting down the farm. Too often, young family farmers choose to leave the industry rather than face the prospect of continuous litigation.

The Governor has vetoed SB188, a bill meant to enact necessary reforms in our state’s employment law system and make our legal climate more predictable for job creators.

Unfortunately, our employment laws have been weakened by years of activist court decisions that have created uncertainty in employment law cases. While both employers and employees were once adequately protected by a system mirroring federal requirements, now the laws governing employment have been stacked in favor of plaintiffs, encouraging frivolous lawsuits. No doubt, much of the erosion in the employment law system can be traced back to the trial attorneys that control the judicial selection process.

“It is a disappointment that Governor Nixon did not sign this commonsense bill into law. This bill would have simply ensured our employment laws mirror federal standards, ensuring consistent application of the law. Our messy employment law situation is discouraging job creation, putting a damper on economic growth, and encouraging continued abuse of our legal system,” said James Harris. “Unfortunately, the concerns of trial attorneys appear to have once again trumped the needs of our state.”

The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee has announced that they plan to mark up legislation that would reform our nation’s ballooning medical malpractice system and protect healthcare providers from frivolous multi-million dollar lawsuits.

The HEALTH Act, sponsored by Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA 11), would cap noneconomic damages in medical malpractice suits at $250,000, limit contingency fees charged by lawyers, and create a three-year statute of limitations for medical malpractice suits.

According to a 2009 estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, direct costs for medical malpractice liability totaled $35 billion during fiscal year 2009. This is a massive drain on our healthcare system that could be substantially abated with reforms like those being proposed right now.

Better Courts for Missouri supports Congressman Gingrey’s effort to rein in the cost of the booming medical malpractice lawsuit industry and protect the healthcare industry from being targeted by greedy trial lawyers. Medical malpractice has gotten out of control, but a cap on both noneconomic damages and lawyers’ contingency fees would help get the system back in line by discouraging baseless lawsuits and bringing damage awards back down to reasonable levels.

We urge you to call your local member of Congress and tell them to support medical malpractice reform.

On March 17, the day before Missouri’s assembly adjourned for Spring Break, the Senate passed a bill to patch holes in Missouri’s workers compensation system that had been opened by two activist court decisions that effectively eliminated workers’ compensation exclusivity and forced occupational disease claims into the tort system. The bill, Senate Bill 8, passed with an overwhelming 29-3 vote.

The aim of the bill is to fix both portions of the law, once again ensuring employers and employees will be protected under the doctrine of workers’ compensation and explicitly requiring occupational disease claims to be covered under the workers’ compensation system. However, the bill also includes language that switches our state to an “affirmative negligence” standard for co-employee liability rather than the current intentional harm standard and removes subrogation rights for employers in cases of occupational disease brought on by toxic exposure. There is no need for these unnecessary provisions – they will not help reform the system, they will only provide trial attorneys with more opportunities to file frivolous lawsuits.

While we are glad the Senate has passed a bill that is intended to reform the workers’ compensation system, we encourage the body to take the House position put forward in HB162. The House bill fixes both aspects of workers’ compensation law without inserting unnecessary language that could potentially weaken the system.

This guest op-ed, written by James Harris, was published by the Springfield News-Leader on March 2, 2011 and can be found here.

The Missouri Senate will soon be voting on SB8, a bill meant to seal holes in our state’s workers’ compensation system that were made when two Missouri courts eliminated protections that had long been a part of Missouri’s workers’ compensation laws. These courts decided that employers and employees could no longer be protected from lawsuits under the doctrine of workers’ compensation exclusivity and that occupational diseases could no longer be covered under the workers’ compensation system, opening up the opportunity for a deluge of lawsuits.

The Senate’s original intent was to patch up both holes in an effort to end the uncertainty in occupational injury litigation, but a surprise floor substitute was put forward that would create a new class of tort action for occupational diseases, in effect reaffirming the court’s decision, and move our state’s co-employee liability standard to “affirmative negligence” rather than intentional harm.

Sen. Goodman of Lawrence County – the sponsor of the original bill – offered the floor substitute, but many in the Capitol believe that the legislation was actually drafted by the Simmons Law Firm, a firm that proudly exclaims on their website that they have recovered more than $3 billion in asbestos lawsuits for thousands of clients. Even if this law firm did not write the revised bill language, it is troubling that the Senator from Lawrence would choose to weaken our workers’ compensation system, opening the door for firms like Simmons to flood our courts with personal injury lawsuits.

Regardless of the reasoning behind this amended version of SB8, we still need to patch up ¬both¬ of the points of weakness that were opened by our courts. We should not allow employers and employees to be subjected to litigation in cases that would normally be covered by workers compensation, nor should we have occupational disease claims be subject to the whims of our courts.

I would encourage the Missouri Senate to defeat Senator Goodman’s substitute and either strike the offending language from the bill or adopt the House position, which is what all business coalition groups have been seeking. By adopting language that is more in tune with the intent of workers compensation – to provide compensation to injured employees without proof of negligence – we can help both employers and employees.

I hope the Senator will look at this from the perspective of people outside the litigation industry. With nearly 9.6% unemployment, our main focus is to get Missourians back to work. We need to get our economy back on the right track, and one of the best ways to do so is to improve our state’s legal climate. While trial attorneys make money from an increase in the volume of litigation in our courts, the employers that drive our economy pay the price. To improve our legal climate and foster job creation, our state needs legislation that will fix our workers compensation system and once again protect our state from costly lawsuits.

This guest op-ed, written by James Harris, was published in the Sunday, February 13 issue of the St. Joseph News Press.

I applaud Representative Casey Guernsey for sponsoring HB209, a bill that will cap awards in nuisance lawsuits against family farms and agribusinesses to the actual fair market value of damages.

A hearing on this bill was held on Tuesday of last week, and listening to the testimony offered I was shocked. One farmer testified that he was recently targeted by a lawsuit even though his family has operated the farm in the same location since the 1830s. A neighbor who moved to a nearby house during the 1960s decided to sue after decades of living there because they felt that the farm had become a “nuisance.” This neighbor didn’t even try to talk with the farm owner about the problem – the only notice given came with a lawsuit.

Under the current system, plaintiffs – who are often led by trial attorneys to believe that they can get free money – are allowed to seek an unlimited amount from nuisance lawsuits. These suits, often targeted at areas where suburbs and cities have expanded into the countryside, can be brought against farms due to smells, noise, dust, or any number of other “nuisances” that plaintiffs may allege have harmed the value of their property and their ability to enjoy their property.

For far too long, our courts have allowed unscrupulous attorneys to get away with suits like this. One large-scale hog farm in Northern Missouri was targeted by over 50 lawsuits over the course of several years, with verdicts as high as $11 million levied against them. When you take into account the usual attorney’s fee for cases like this – 30% of any verdict – you can see the true motivation behind the suits: lining attorneys’ pockets.

These lawsuits don’t just target factory farms – family farmers all over our state are facing lawsuits due to normal farming practices. If this continues, future generations will not want to risk taking over their family farms with the prospect of being threatened with a lawsuit hanging over their heads.

Unfortunately, this is what happens when you allow trial attorneys to pick our state’s judges – the whole system becomes skewed in favor of plaintiffs and the attorneys who profit from frivolous lawsuits. This is why we need to reform our judicial selection process to put the people in charge of selecting our judges, not trial attorneys.

It is sad that our legislature even has to contemplate making such a common sense law as the one Rep. Guernsey proposes, but that is what happens when elite trial lawyers are allowed to dominate the judicial selection process – you have to start legislating common sense.

Representative Stanley Cox has filed a bill, HJR 18, which would put a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would make changes to the Missouri Plan to foster transparency and accountability in the judicial selection system. The bill would increase the number of nominees on panels from three to five, would increase the number of non-lawyer citizens on the commission from three to four, and would allow the governor to appoint all four citizen members upon taking office. The bill would also require each member of the Appellate Judicial Commission to undergo Senate confirmation. Additionally, the governor would be able to refuse panels of nominees, a power that was taken away by the Missouri Bar in the 1970s.

Momentum has been building behind the judicial selection reform movement. The people of Missouri know something needs to be done to take control of our courts away from trial attorneys and powerful liberal interest groups, and now it is up to the Missouri legislature to solve the problem with legislation that will ensure transparency and accountability are a part of the Missouri Plan.

“The Missouri Plan is no longer doing its intended job – keeping special interests and political elites from controlling our courts. Trial attorneys have commandeered the system to ensure the courts represent their interests, while ordinary citizens have been left with no real way to make corrections and realign the courts with the broader interests of our state as a whole. Independent groups like the Pacific Research Institute and the American Tort Reform Association continually cite our courts as among the worst in the nation,” said James Harris. “Our founding fathers would be appalled to see such an abuse of democracy and of our judiciary. We need to change the Missouri Plan, and we need to do it now.”

Better Courts for Missouri urges Missourians to let your voices be heard and tell your legislators that judicial selection reform must be passed immediately.

Today, a federal judge in Florida ruled the national healthcare law unconstitutional. He finds that the “individual mandate” portion of the law, the mandate that individuals purchase insurance or face a fine, is unconstitutional. Moreover, he ruled that the law as a whole must be nullified because the “individual mandate” provision is not severable from the rest of the law.

“I applaud Judge Roger Vinson for standing up against this unconstitutional mandate. Fortunately, this decision wasn’t left up to judges chosen by a secretive, trial-attorney dominated selection process like we have in Missouri. There is no doubt in my mind that this ruling would have been different in our state, where judges are under the constant influence of the liberal special interests that control the judicial selection process,” said James Harris.

Better Courts for Missouri is joining the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Independent Business, and other groups in supporting employment law reform, workers’ compensation reform, and tort reform. These reforms are targeted at improving our state’s business climate by strengthening existing reforms and implementing new policies that will discourage costly frivolous lawsuits.

“Reforming employment law, workers’ compensation, and tort law will have numerous benefits for our state. Unfortunately, trial lawyer control of Missouri’s courts has steadily weakened each of these areas of law, creating a hostile business climate that keeps our state’s economy from being competitive,” said James Harris of Better Courts for Missouri.

Better Courts for Missouri urges you to call your local Representatives and Senators to tell them to focus on getting our state back on the right track by reforming employment law, worker’s compensation, and tort law.

Trial Lawyers Inc., a series of reports prepared by the Manhattan Institute, sheds light on the strong political ties that trial lawyers have to liberal politicians.

One of these reports finds that lawyers have contributed over $780 million to federal elections and $725 to state elections over the past decade, more than any other industry. More than 90% of this money goes to Democrats.

What does this money buy them? According to a Washington Times editorial, prominent liberal Howard Dean “admitted the main reason Democrats don’t include lawsuit reform in their health care proposals is that they are afraid of angering the plaintiffs’ lawyers.” Trial attorneys play such a large part in liberal elections that the fear of losing their support allows them direct influence over national policy.

No doubt, their power is magnified by systems like the Missouri Plan that allow lawyers to dominate the judicial selection process. Only by putting the people back in charge can we hope to overcome their influence and ensure our courts work for the people, not for a select group of trial attorneys.

After successfully ousting three Supreme Court judges in this year’s retention elections after the court made a unanimous decision to overturn a state law against gay marriage, Iowans are now looking to get rid of the four remaining judges responsible for the decision by pushing the legislature to impeach the judges who were not up for election in 2010.

“This is what happens when you have a secretive judicial selection process that is controlled by attorneys. What we have seen in Iowa is that the Missouri Plan invariably produces an activist court that works to eliminate commonsense conservative laws and replace them with policies that fit their own liberal agenda. Like many in Missouri, the people of Iowa have had enough and are now demanding to take control of the courts away from the liberal interest groups that dominate the judicial selection process under the Missouri Plan,” said James Harris of Better Courts for Missouri.

You can read more about the impeachment effort here.

According to the American Justice Partnership, a pro-legal reform group, an estimated 15.58 million lawsuits have been filed this year. The number is based on an estimate released by the National Center for State Courts in 2006, wherein they found that a new lawsuit is filed every two seconds.

The amount of lawsuits being filed in the United States is nothing short of ludicrous, and unfortunately far too many of them are baseless attempts to use our courts to make attorneys very rich. This is why our nation’s tort system is among the worst in the world.

Unfortunately, Missouri has one of the worst tort environments in our nation – 45th of 50, according to the Pacific Research Institute’s 2010 Tort Liability Index. Why is it so bad? We continue to let trial attorneys control judicial selection, and they have used their powerful position to systematically weaken our courts and counteract reforms to our system.

To create a fair legal climate, we need to make fundamental reforms to the way we choose our judges. We must introduce openness and accountability to the system in order to eliminate the influence of trial attorneys. We cannot afford to let these elite attorneys continue to control the process.

This year’s retention election results proved once again why the Missouri Plan cannot be trusted to produce the highest-quality courts possible. Judge Judy Draper, one of only three judges in Missouri history to be given a “do not retain” rating by the Missouri Bar, was retained with 55.3% voting to keep her in office.

Why is she still in office? It isn’t because the people of her district like her enough to ignore her consistently low Bar ratings. Simply put, she gets to keep her place on the court because the people she serves don’t know who she is.

One of the least competent judges to ever be appointed to the court gets to continue deciding cases and collecting a salary because the Missouri Plan doesn’t get the people involved in the judicial selection process. When they go to the ballot box, so few people know who the judges are that they almost invariably retain the judges regardless of what the Bar or anyone else says. Since the judges have no opponents, there is no incentive for anyone to publicize their record or question their abilities outside of the Bar survey.

Clearly, retention elections are not an effective means of holding our judges accountable. For our courts to work for us, we need a real way to impose accountability.

This week, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s voice was used for an automated call in favor of a ballot question in Nevada that would replace the state’s judicial elections with a version of the Missouri Plan. In an act of tremendous ignorance on the part of the consultants hired by the ballot campaign, the call was made at 1 a.m., waking up people all over the state of Nevada.

This call has many asking questions about the propriety of judges trading on the prestige of their positions to champion political causes. In articles all over the internet, including at the National Review Online and the New York Times, commentators are debating the ethical implications of this situation. While she has retired from the Supreme Court, Justice O’Connor still regularly sits on federal benches as a senior judge to fill in for others in the case of absence or recusal.

Rather than treading cautiously as required by the ethical rules governing sitting judges, Justice O’Connor has used her semi-retirement to become very active in the pro-Missouri Plan movement. Indeed, she is freely violating her own calls for a less-politicized judiciary by becoming so deeply (and hypocritically) involved while sitting on some of our nation’s highest courts. By using her unique position to advocate taking the power of judicial selection away from the people and putting it in the hands of a select group which has been shown to have an interest in taking our courts farther to the left, she is doing a disservice both to the people she serves as a judge and to the office itself.

A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal painted an interesting portrait of the battle for the judiciary in Nevada, one that makes it clear how involved George Soros and others on the left are in the promotion of the Missouri Plan. To read the article, please click here.

For those who aren’t familiar with the story, a plan to abolish judicial elections in Nevada and replace them with a version of the Missouri Plan will be on the ballot this November. However, this isn’t on the ballot because the people want change. According to a Magellan Strategies poll cited by WSJ, over 71% of people prefer elections to allowing judges to be appointed and only 9% said they thought the current Supreme Court was doing a bad job. Indeed, they rejected a similar ballot measure twice, once in 1972 and again in 1988.

So why is this on the ballot again when it is clear the people of Nevada don’t want it? George Soros and his own personal interest groups, Justice at Stake and the Open Society Institute, have been pushing for it non-stop. You see, Nevada is going to be their test case before taking the push wider.

Soros and his liberal comrades know the Missouri Plan is flawed, and that is precisely why they support it. When a state uses the Missouri Plan to select judges, powerful legal interests are put in charge and the court takes a marked turn to the left. It is this weakness that they hope to exploit. Their calls for “judicial independence” are nothing more than a smokescreen. What they really want is to be able to have their powerful liberal friends be able to pick activist judges without any real way for the public to fight back. Is this the kind of “judicial independence” we need?

As so often happens, the Kansas City Star (which has already published an editorial on the matter) and the Post-Dispatch (which is expected to publish a pro-Missouri Plan editorial later this week) will undoubtedly use Chief Justice Price’s announcement of small changes to the judicial selection process as an excuse to come together to sing the praises of the Missouri Plan. Both papers will certainly insist that these small steps will be a cure-all for the system, which they revere as the best judicial selection plan in the nation.

Interestingly, the Missouri Plan has been a target of both papers’ adoration several times over the past two years. This is because every time the Missouri Bar needs help, the Kansas City Star and Eddie Roth from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch run to the rescue. They consistently use the talking points of the Bar and the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys, focusing on how widespread “merit selection” is and gushing about having a plan named after our state without asking if the Missouri Plan really works or acknowledging that most “merit” states have had to make significant changes to avoid the problems we are facing in Missouri.

The simple truth is that our current version of the Missouri Plan is a relic of days that are long gone. We don’t have to worry about political machines like the one run by the Pendergast family interfering with the proper conduct of elections. Now, the threat to our courts is coming from within the Missouri Plan itself. Personal injury attorneys have used their ties to the Appellate Judicial Commission to gain undue influence over the nomination process, ensuring that the judges chosen to serve us are really there to serve the interests of a very small number of powerful attorneys.

To get our courts back on the right track and ensure fair justice for all Missourians, our state needs true transparency and real accountability in the judicial selection process.

The Missouri Bar has announced their recommendation that St. Louis County Associate Circuit Judge Judy Preddy Draper not be retained in the upcoming election. She is only the third judge to receive this recommendation since 1940.

On the Bar’s website, their outline of her ratings includes the dubious distinction that Judge Draper was rated at a 3.00 or lower (out of a possible 5.00) in 16 of 18 categories. According to the same document, “any rating below 3.00 indicates a need for improvement” – essentially, she failed in all but two categories. Among her lowest scores were a 1.83 for legal competency and 1.97 for her understanding of procedural and evidential rules.

“While we agree Judge Draper should not be retained and applaud the Missouri Bar for recognizing that she is a poor judge, it is clear that the Missouri Plan is flawed. The last time Judge Draper was up for a retention election, only 27.5% of those surveyed recommend she be retained. She was still retained by a landslide. Now, she has scored even lower. Unfortunately, our ineffective court plan may mean she is retained again,” said James Harris of Better Courts for Missouri.

Years of trial lawyer control have done massive damage to our state’s tort system, putting our courts among the worst in the nation according to the Pacific Research Institute’s 2010 Tort Liability Index. PRI rates our state 45th in the nation for tort liability, just two spots above our notoriously corrupt neighbor to the east, Illinois. The only respectable score Missouri received was for our state’s cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases.

Unfortunately, even our tort reform laws – our state’s only bright spot in the PRI survey – are in danger if we continue to let trial attorneys have so much control over our courts. Attorneys have a vested interest in doing away with tort reform, as without caps they could expect to win millions of dollars from cases that would otherwise be capped at a reasonable amount.

To reverse the trend towards activism and pro-plaintiff courts, we must initiate real change in our judicial selection process. We have to bring openness and accountability to the system in order to reduce the influence of trial attorneys and other liberal special interest groups. Only by giving the people more control over the judicial selection process can we hope to turn our courts around.

The U.S. Senate has confirmed Elena Kagan’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court as the newest associate justice. By confirming a known supporter of judicial activism, the liberals who control our nation’s Senate have ensured that our Supreme Court remains prone to decisions that twist the meaning of our Constitution and overstep the bounds of the court.

Clearly, this is the liberals’ plan to ensure that our nation continues to bend to their will. President Obama has now had the opportunity to appoint two Supreme Court justices, and both have been liberal activists that have pushed our court further to the left.

Missouri’s Senators had an opportunity to stand up for common sense Missouri values, but they were split on the vote, with Senator Bond voting against Kagan’s confirmation and Senator McCaskill voting for her confirmation.

Senators Claire McCaskill and Kit Bond have an opportunity to endorse judicial restraint by voting NO when asked to confirm Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Will they take this opportunity, or will they allow another judicial activist to be appointed to our highest court?

Elena Kagan has a record of supporting judicial activism that reaches back to her time as a law clerk for renowned judicial activist Justice Thurgood Marshall. Rather than interpreting the constitution as a concrete document, she has expressed her opinion that it is a “living document,” opening the door for activist legal interpretations.

Furthermore, it has been revealed she looks to a controversial former Israeli Supreme Court justice, Judge Aharon Barak, as a “judicial hero.” Why is this a concern? Judge Barak helped to transform Israel’s Supreme Court by drastically expanding its powers and embracing the doctrine of “comparative law” – letting international legal decisions influence domestic legal interpretation. Understandably, her admiration for such an undeniably activist and international-minded jurist has many worried about her possible impact on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Better Courts for Missouri urges Senators McCaskill and Bond to vote NO on confirming Elena Kagan’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Missouri Law Review devoted their entire summer volume to a symposium on the Missouri Plan. One piece by Stephen J. Ware, entitled The Missouri Plan in National Perspective, was particularly striking. Ranking the judicial selection systems of the fifty states on a continuum from most populist to most elitist, he found the Missouri Plan was the most elitist and most undemocratic way to select judges.

Ware finds that allowing an appointed commission to have so much power in the judicial selection process, particularly a commission in which the lawyer members are chosen by the Bar rather than by elected officials, violates some of the most basic principles of democracy by giving a small segment of the population – in this case, members of the bar – more influence than the average person. Furthermore, by not requiring Senate confirmation and not offering elected officials any choice other than the panel presented by the commission, Ware finds that “the Missouri Plan gives the commission more power to force one of its favorites on the democratically elected officials” (Page 760). Should a commission in which 3 of 7 members are elected directly by the Bar, with no input from elected officials or the average citizen, have such broad powers in a democracy? These commissioners are accountable to nobody except for those in the Bar’s narrow constituency. How can they be expected to represent all of the people of Missouri when they are only held accountable by a select few?

Quite simply, they can’t. Undemocratic flaws make our current version of the Missouri Plan unresponsive to the needs of the people and prone to corruption. Fortunately, simple reforms to increase openness and accountability can make our system better and give us a stronger, more democratic judiciary.

Better Courts for Missouri encourages you to read Ware’s piece and ask yourself: Is our version of the Missouri Plan, one of the least citizen-oriented in the nation, really serving us as well as it should? The answer you find will undoubtedly be no.

The latest victory for greedy trial lawyers has come just next door to Missouri in Illinois, where the state Supreme Court has ruled that a cap on non-economic damages that became law in 2005 is unconstitutional. They ruled that the cap was an infringement of the separation of powers, that it amounted to a “legislative remittitur” that interfered with the judiciary’s traditional power to determine the damages to be awarded in a case, and that such an infringement would invalidate the law in its entirety.

This is a bad decision that will cause doctors to leave Illinois and will cause patients to pay higher prices for the care they receive because protection from junk lawsuits has been eliminated. Junk lawsuits have been estimated to increase health care costs by 10% and are a major motivation for physicians who choose to retire or move their practice to avoid harsh legal climates.

For more information, please read the verdict, available here.

Today, the Missouri Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in Klotz v. St. Anthony’s, a case which challenges the constitutionality of the non-economic damage caps that are a part of our state’s comprehensive tort reform laws. In this case, a jury originally awarded an amount for non-economic damages that exceeded the $350,000 cap. In order to comply with state law, the court granted a motion to cut damages to $350,000. The verdict was appealed and is now before the Missouri Supreme Court.

“I hope that the court will practice judicial restraint and uphold the caps on non-economic damages,” said James Harris. “Without caps, dishonest attorneys would have an incentive to file more frivolous lawsuits, raising malpractice insurance prices, causing an exodus of doctors and raising the price of health care for everyone. Our tort reform laws are constitutional and sensible – to overturn them would be destructive and irresponsible.”

The following was printed in the Springfield News-Leader on January 1, 2010, and can be found on their website.

The fate of tort reform is now in the hands of the Missouri Supreme Court. Oral arguments in Klotz v. St. Anthony's are set for Jan. 14 , and tort reform opponents are champing at the bit for the chance to take down our state's barrier to ridiculously high non-economic damage awards. Indeed, the repeal of tort reform laws by lawyer-influenced courts has become a disturbing national pattern - approximately 138 tort reform statutes have been overturned, according to the American Tort Reform Association.

Trial lawyers, with the ability to manipulate Missouri's courts, have undoubtedly been working to make sure our judges are predisposed to rule against tort statutes that limit non-economic damages and discourage frivolous lawsuits. After all, Missouri's tort reform laws are the only thing keeping them from collecting the kind of multi-million dollar "pain and suffering" verdicts that have bought jets and mansions for lawyers in other states.

There is reason to be worried that our state could soon find itself without protection from these costly lawsuits. In Meyer ex. rel. Coplin v. Fluor Corp., the Missouri Supreme Court found that a company was responsible for paying the costs of medical monitoring for a possible future illness, a break with precedent (and common sense) that historically dictated that damages could only be recovered if the plaintiff has a demonstrable injury. It is not a stretch to imagine that a court willing to play so fast and loose with standard tort procedure would happily overturn reform statutes if given a chance.

The overturning of our current tort reform laws would threaten Missouri's ability to create economic growth. Right now, having tort reform laws on the books puts us at a comparative advantage with other states and other nations when competing for new industries. The loss of these laws would put us at a disadvantage, discouraging companies from creating new jobs in Missouri which could be created more cheaply in other states.

The economic impact of the loss of tort reform should not be underestimated: it would be absolutely devastating to our economy. The high insurance rates and other costs that plagued this state before tort reform was enacted would return and once again hamstring our economy. Medical malpractice insurance rates would skyrocket, causing doctors to leave the state in waves as they were doing before Missouri's tort reform laws were put in place. Workers compensation and health insurance premiums would rise in response to the increased cost of health care. Not only would the cost of doing business increase in Missouri, overturning tort reform would have a ripple effect that would increase the cost of living in Missouri.

I urge the people of Missouri to write your legislators to let them know that tort reform is in danger. We can only hope that the courts will respect Missouri's best interests when making this decision and let our tort limits stand. Unfortunately, it is out of our hands now.

The Missouri Supreme Court has taken a small step to increase the transparency of the judicial selection process by implementing a new court rule that will allow the release of the names of all applicants who are interviewed for any judicial opening. In the past, they have released only the names of the three applicants who were selected for presentation to the governor.

While this is a good first step, it is not the only change that needs to be made. Knowing who has been interviewed will help citizens see if the commission is passing over more-qualified people for political cronies, but there will still be no method for accountability. Even if the actions of the commission are demonstrably reprehensible, there will be little that citizens can do to deter such actions in the future.

Transparency is important, but it will do nothing without introducing some method of accountability – whether more citizen input on the commission, legislative approval, or elections.

You can read more about the decision in an Associated Press story here.

Legislation has been pre-filed in the Missouri Senate aimed at reforming Missouri’s judicial selection process. The bill would allow voters to cast their ballots on an amendment to replace the flawed Missouri Plan with a selection system modeled on the federal system, which has worked for our nation for over two centuries. Under the plan, the governor would make judicial appointments which would then be subject to the advice and consent of the Senate. The retention elections that are in place under the current plan would remain in place, as well as a retention election after an appointed judge has been in office for ten years.

Momentum has been building behind the judicial selection reform movement after passage of a similar measure in the House last year and the approval of two initiative petitions aimed at replacing the “Missouri Plan” with a system that will provide our state with quality judges while eliminating the harmful influence of special interest groups.

Founding figures like John Adams and Thomas Paine would be appalled to see the destruction that these special interests have wrought. The passage of a plan to reform our judicial selection process would ensure that greedy ambulance chasers who want to bastardize our justice system to enrich themselves are no longer allowed to shape the judiciary. With the accountability measures of the federal plan combined with the retention elections of the Missouri Plan, the people can once again be in the driver’s seat of government and ensure that our courts work for the best interests of the state, not just for the narrow interests of a privileged few.

In 2010, there will undoubtedly be more progress in the effort to reform Missouri’s judicial selection process. We urge you to let your voices be heard and tell your legislators that judicial selection reform must be passed immediately.

Parties have until November 5 to file briefs in Klotz v. St. Anthony’s, a case which challenges the constitutionality of damage caps in Missouri’s tort reform laws (you can read the appellants' brief here). The case will be heard before the Missouri Supreme Court soon and the briefs that are submitted could play a big part in determining the outcome of the case.

Already, several prominent personal injury lawyers and left-of-center interest groups have weighed in by submitting their own amicus briefs urging the court to make an activist decision and strike down tort reform. More troubling, our highest courts have been under the influence of legal industry special interest groups for years and these groups want nothing more than to take down our tort reform laws. In state after state, personal injury attorneys have encouraged courts to strike down laws for their own financial benefit, and in many of these states courts have obliged.

Nationwide, over 140 tort reform statutes have been thrown out by courts under the influence of legal industry special interests. We cannot afford for Missouri’s laws to become yet another casualty of lawyer-controlled courts. Better Courts for Missouri urges you to call your state legislators and make sure they are aware of this challenge to tort reform.

Better Courts for Missouri suggests that all who are interested in how trial lawyer influence shapes our courts should read "The Rule of Lawyers: How the New Litigation Elite Threatens America's Rule of Law" by Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. The book, which can be found here, is an interesting examination of the impact that class-action lawyers have had on our judicial system. By using the courts to strike down or re-write the law without public input, they pass over our elected representatives and voters, undermining the proper function of government.

With all of the chaos surrounding the national health care debate, it is unfortunate that our nation’s leaders have forgotten the importance of protecting tort reform – an important way to drive down the cost of health care for everyone. Tort reform statutes are in danger nationwide as trial lawyers use their influence over the judiciary to have caps on lawsuit damages thrown out. Now, they are fighting to avoid one of the most serious potential obstacles to their profession – a national tort reform law.

As Fred Barnes pointed out in an interesting article for The Weekly Standard (found here), the lack of tort reform costs Americans billions of dollars every year, making tort reform an indispensable part of any attempt to reform our nation’s health care system. Bill Bradley, former Democratic Senator from New Jersey, wrote in a New York Times editorial that tort reform should be coupled with the current health care bill to make it more palatable for all involved. Unfortunately, Barnes found the reason why Congressional liberals haven’t brought up tort reform as an option during this debate – trial attorneys are using their influence to block the progress of national tort reform, choosing to line their pockets at our expense rather than allow legal reforms that would reduce cost of care for everyone in this nation.

Better Courts for Missouri urges you to call your Congressional representatives and Missouri’s Senators to urge them to pass national tort reform laws as part of any health care legislation. The advocacy group Sick of Lawsuits, citing a 2006 study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, has found that the price of lawsuits and defensive medicine practiced solely to avoid lawsuits accounts for ten cents of every dollar spent on health care in this country. We lose billions annually in extraneous costs that could be curbed if our nation’s health care professionals were allowed to practice medicine without the constant threat of frivolous litigation. Our nation’s leaders need to put our needs before the wishes of the powerful trial attorney lobby and enact tort reform legislation to protect our courts and our wallets from abuse. This is a real way to reduce unneeded litigation and reduce the cost of care.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal published an article, “Fraud by Trial Lawyers Taints Wave of Pesticide Lawsuits” (which can be found here), about fraud in recent pesticide-related cases. U.S. trial attorneys, smelling profits in the wind, swept into South America to exploit plaintiff-friendly courts and make millions on suits against produce companies accused of knowingly exposing workers to harmful pesticides. Of course, it wasn’t enough for them to find people who were really hurt. Finding it incredibly easy to win huge sums of money, they initiated fraudulent lawsuits on behalf of people who had not worked near these pesticides, faked medical results for people who had worked near the pesticide, and kept exploiting the legal system to take as much money as they could. This is a clear example of how the culture of greed in the trial attorney community results in courts being treated like slot machines. Courts should be about justice, not about a pay day.

Our nation needs more Supreme Court justices who interpret the Constitution as it is written and judge with neutrality in mind, not ideology. Please call US Senator Kit Bond at (202) 224-5721 and US Senator Claire McCaskill at (202)-224-6154 to tell them to vote NO on Judge Sotomayor’s appointment to the Supreme Court.

The recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Caperton case makes it clear how important a fair and impartial judiciary is to the correct operation of our justice system. In Caperton v. Massey, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a judge must recuse themselves if it is reasonable to suspect that they have a particular interest in the outcome of a case – an interest that, if not leading directly to a bias, could reasonably make one suspicious of a bias.

Better Courts for Missouri is very interested in how this ruling might apply to a potential court hearing involving judicial selection reform-related ballot language. This year, judges were actively calling lawmakers and employees of the court were working with trial attorneys to block judicial selection reform. How can Missourians reasonably expect a fair and impartial hearing on judicial selection reform if the presiding judges were actively lobbying against it? Obviously, this is the kind of situation that the Supreme Court was looking to avoid when authoring the Caperton decision – a situation wherein public trust of the courts is lost as politics become central to a judgment. Will those justices who lobbied against judicial selection reform legislation recuse themselves if ballot language comes before the court? Surely, we cannot expect a fair and impartial hearing if they do not. Time will tell.

While neither of the judicial selection reform bills proposed during this legislative session succeeded in passing through both houses of the legislature and onto the ballot, the effort represented progress and is by no means over. Legislation of this scope can often take several attempts to pass, and the judicial selection reform movement is moving very quickly compared to many other legislative efforts. HJR10, the house version of the judicial selection reform bill, passed the House with a bi-partisan vote and was presented to the Senate during only its second year as a legislative proposal, seeing some vigorous and constructive debate but ultimately no vote as it was pushed aside during the legislative logjam that has become a hallmark of the end of session in the Senate.

Such progress is not to be taken lightly. Only a small fraction of bills ever make it past the House, and even fewer ever see the light of day in the Senate. For judicial reform to make it as far as it did in only its second year is a major accomplishment, and is a sign that reform is close at hand.

Better Courts for Missouri is busily working on the future of judicial selection reform, gearing up for next year’s effort to take back our courts from the special interests that currently control the selection process. The progress that was made this year shows that judicial selection reform is an issue that our legislators know they need to act on; with more floor time and a renewed effort next year, reform can become a reality. Passage of responsible reform is within sight, and we will work to make sure that it is a top legislative priority next year. In addition to our legislative plan, we will prepare to begin an initiative petition to bypass special interests and go directly to the people for a vote on reform.

We would like to give special thanks to Representative Stanley Cox, Speaker Ron Richard, Senator Jim Lembke, Senator Brad Lager, and Representative Steve Tilley for their hard work in advancing the cause of judicial selection reform during this session. Their help was indispensable.

Next year, look for a renewed, reinvigorated judicial selection reform effort as Better Courts for Missouri continues to advocate for transparency and accountability in the judicial selection process. Missourians deserve better than the current system can offer. We hope you will join us as we work toward a solution that will give us better courts and ensure that our judicial selection process is no longer dominated by cronyism or back-room deals with destructive special interest groups. With your help, we can make sure our courts’ primary concern is the best interests of Missourians, not the whims of the elite.

On page A12 of the April 18, 2009, issue, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial covering the effort for judicial selection reform in Missouri.

The editorial, entitled "Missouri Brakes - The Sue Me State Reconsiders Judicial Selection," says that the current system has "given disproportionate influence to lawyers groups," a situation that could be fixed by reforms that "would bring more transparency and reduce the power of the trial lawyers while expanding the range of candidates presented to the governor." Our state's courts are in trouble, but Missourians have the power to make them better.

You can read the full article here.

Today, judicial selection reform reached another major milestone. With a bi-partisan vote, the Missouri House gave final approval to House Joint Resolution 10, which will now be sent to the Senate for their approval before being placed on the ballot.

Better Courts for Missouri thanks House leadership for their dedication to reform and their swift passage of this bill.

You can read the full press release here.

House Joint Resolution 10 was voted perfected and printed after debate on the floor of the Missouri House of Representatives today. This is a major milestone for this important legislation, and Better Courts for Missouri applauds House leadership for encouraging its passage.

You can read the full press release here.

Senate Joint Resolution 9, which proposes a constitutional amendment to enact reforms in our state's judicial nomination process, has been approved by the Missouri Senate's Governmental Accountability and Fiscal Oversight Committee. We applaud the committee's expediency in approving this needed legislation.

You can read the full press release here.

Today, James Harris, Executive Director of Better Courts for Missouri, joined several renowned legal experts, attorneys, and grassroots activists in testifying before the Senate Government Accountability and Fiscal Oversight Committee, speaking in support of SJR 9 and the need for reform in our judicial selection process.

For the full press release, please click here.

In a speech given at the University of Missouri School of Law on Friday, February 27, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor voiced her support for “a little bit of perfecting” to the Missouri plan, including increased transparency in the judicial selection process and decreasing the influence of lawyers on the selection commission by possibly increasing the amount of lay members, saying, "While I favor a merit selection system, that has become synonymous with Missouri, it's important to remember that its value relies entirely on the premise of diminishing the politics in judicial selection, so if it fails to do that, maybe it fails on its first principles."

We applaud Supreme Court Justice O’Connor’s stand for transparency and a trustworthy commission, and urge Missourians to call for these needed reforms. You can read the full press release here and read several articles regarding her speech on our news page.

Both SJR 9 and HJR 10 are moving steadily forward after being assigned to committees, an essential step in putting judicial reform on the ballot. SJR 9 has been assigned to the Government Accountability and Fiscal Oversight Committee and HJR 10 has been assigned to the Special Standing Committee on General Laws, with hearings soon to be scheduled.

We applaud legislative leadership for their expediency in assuring that this needed legislation is acted upon.

Senator Jim Lembke and Senator Jane Cunningham have introduced Senate Joint Resolution 9, which, if passed, will allow Missourians to vote on reforming Missouri’s judicial selection process. You can read the full bill text here or a summary here.

The addition of SJR 9 means both houses of the legislature now have reform legislation working through the system. Please call your local legislators and tell them to support these two important pieces of legislation.

Representative Stanley Cox has filed HJR 10, which, if passed, will put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to reform our state’s nominating process by increasing transparency and weakening the influence of special interests on the nominating commission. You can read the full bill text here or a summary here.

Missourians deserve a better, more transparent appellate judicial nomination process. Please call your local legislator and tell them to support HJR 10.

In New York, Governor David Paterson, a Democrat, is calling for reforms to his state’s judicial nominating process, which operates similarly to Missouri’s, after receiving an unsatisfactory lineup of nominees for the post of Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals. The commission chose a panel devoid of diversity: all seven of the nominees put forth by the committee were male, while the retiring judge being replaced was the first female to ever serve as Chief Judge. A New York Times article from January 14, 2009 (which can be found here) quoted Paterson as saying, "Though I am thrilled to choose Judge Lippman to serve as our next chief judge, I firmly believe that we must revise the process for future judicial nominations to ensure that those under consideration represent all New Yorkers.”

The New York experience points out yet another shortcoming of many iterations of the Missouri Plan: a committee devoid of any accountability mechanism is free, without fear of reprisal, to choose a panel that does not necessarily represent or serve the needs of the state. A simple solution to this problem is to allow for more transparency in the nominating process. Unfortunately, the interests that dominate Missouri’s nominating committee refuse to open up the committee’s activities, continuing to operate behind closed doors despite public calls for transparency.

A system without some form of public accountability for the nominating committee is not conducive to good government. Special interests or corrupt individuals can dominate the nominating process, advancing certain judges to serve their own needs while passing over many qualified jurists for superficial or political reasons. New York’s governor is taking a step in the right direction by calling for reform. Missouri’s government needs to do the same this year. The calls for reform are non-partisan; unfortunately, our courts are not, no matter what the Bar says. Missourians deserve a fair, responsible nominating process that won’t allow special interests to have undue influence over the composition of our courts.

Please sign your name to this petition and pass it along to other Missourians.

Let our leaders know you do not support the lawyer-dominated Missouri Plan's secrecy and lack of accountability.

This past Saturday, the Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial (which can be found here) in response to many comments that had been received regarding the American Bar Association’s recent decision to endorse the expanded use of “merit selection” plans in states and a similar plan to be used at the national level. In this editorial, they pointed to the difficulties that Missouri’s supposed “merit” plan has caused, specifically that lawyers have used the lack of public accountability for the Appellate Judicial Commission to force the Governor to choose a judge of their choice.

Not only have trial attorneys abused the system to force judges into the Missouri Supreme Court, they have used the “non-partisan” and “merit-oriented” nature of the system (as it was originally envisioned) as a shield every time they have been attacked for their actions and every time that the people call for reform. What these attorneys won’t admit is that the Missouri Plan is no longer non-partisan and it is no longer a system for choosing judges by merit. Trial attorneys ruined that long ago when they began to use the system for their own personal gain and to advance their own political agenda.

Missouri needs reform. The Missouri Plan doesn’t work, and a national version of a “merit selection” plan would only expand the corruption that already exists. The people of this state deserve a transparent process with some measure of accountability for bad decisions or corrupt actions in order to keep trial attorneys and interest groups from hand-picking judges behind citizens’ backs. We need a judiciary we can have confidence in, one that knows when to call a ball and when to call a strike.

The time to make important improvements to the Missouri Plan for selecting judges is NOW. Please Get Involved and restore checks and balances in Missouri.

Go here to sign our simple online petition.

And be sure to use this handy form to send your legislators a letter.

Please sign your name to this petition and pass it along to other Missourians. Let legislators know it is time to fix the way judges are picked in Missouri.

According to This AP story regarding judicial selection reform, the Missouri Bar's lobbyist believes our efforts are "a solution in search of a problem."

Unfortunately, the facts are against him.

PROBLEM: Seventeen of the last eighteen nominees to the Supreme Court have come from one major party.

Non-partisan?

PROBLEM: One of the nominees to replace Judge White on the Supreme Court had THE lowest Bar Rating of any appellate or Supreme Court Judge in the 2006 retention election.

Merit?

PROBLEM: Though they represent less than 10% of the legal profession, the elite trial lawyers of MATA have had overwhelming influence on the Appellate Judicial Commission, the commission that selects judges. (Currently, ALL of the lawyer-members of the Commission are either MATA leaders or active with the organization.) No organization in the state of Missouri has a more direct financial interest in appointing judges.

Accountable?

PROBLEM: The current process is conducted in absolute secrecy, opening the door for special interests to hijack the process. If the current system is the best in the world:

Why keep it so secret?

PROBLEM: The current process discriminates against minorities. As former Representative Elbert Walton pointed out recently, there has never been an African American elected by the Missouri Bar to the lawyer-member slots on the Appellate Judicial Commission.

SOLUTION: We support the Missouri Plan because we believe it has a strong foundation of checks and balances. But over the years, through legislative changes or mere passing of time, politics and cronyism have diminished the Missouri Plan's ability to live up to the honorable goals of its drafters. It is time to improve the Missouri Plan. It is time for a New Missouri Plan. Let's have a debate over the real flaws and stop pretending the current process is perfect.

Better Courts for Missouri stood yesterday with a bipartisan group of legislators and lawyers to announce the filing of an initiative petition to improve the way Missouri's judges are selected.

See the summary of the initiative petition and the amendment language here.

This memo to Missouri Legislators describes the special interest backgrounds of some of the Appellate Judicial Commissioners. After reading the memo, you may begin to have doubts about the "non-partisan" nature of the judicial selection panel.

Read the memo here.

Better Courts for Missouri Coalition leaders express optimism as they achieve two important milestones in their effort to modernize the Missouri Plan for selecting judges.

Read the full press release here.