Uphill battle on judicial appointments

MGM Mirage Senior Vice President Paula Gentile, co-chairwoman of the Nevada Supreme Court’s Article 6 Commission, says she remains undecided on Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio’s proposal that Nevada judges be appointed instead of elected.

The panel — directed by state Chief Justice Bill Maupin to seek ways to improve the state’s judicial system — failed to endorse the proposal Wednesday and will probably consider the matter again in January.

Under Sen. Raggio’s proposal, all judicial vacancies in the state would be filled via appointment by the governor, who would choose from a list of three names submitted to him by the Commission on Judicial Selection, made up entirely of attorneys. If the governor didn’t find anyone on that list of three names to his liking, he would be free to request a different list naming three new candidates.

Thereafter, having served one term, each appointed judge would face one “yes or no” retention election.

This would be better, according to both Sen. Raggio, R-Reno, and Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, because it would reduce the need for judges to raise campaign contributions in order to wage contested elections, such fundraising being seen by the public as a source of potential corruption.

Is the current system perfect? No. Might a judge currently feel some obligation to grant greater leeway to a defendant or appellant whose lawyer has contributed to the judge’s election or re-election campaign? Quite possibly.

The question, as Ms. Gentile correctly observed, is whether supporters of this proposed appointment system can show that it produces judges less prone to corruption, cronyism and influence-peddling.

Appointees can face a public impression that they follow the party line of the politician who appointed them, Ms. Gentile pointed out. She wondered aloud whether Sen. Raggio’s proposal might merely substitute one problem for another.

Sen. Raggio’s appointment proposal — which would have to be placed on the ballot by the 2009 Legislature as a proposed constitutional amendment, faces an uphill fight, as he himself acknowledged.

With similar proposals having been soundly trounced at the polls twice before, “It’s going to be a hard sell,” Mr. Raggio told the commission Wednesday.

Nevadans have been electing their judges for 143 years. They’re unlikely to miss the fact that the real goal of the lawyers and political class here is to come up with a more reliable way to shut troublesome outsiders out of the process. They will argue this would make things far more orderly and dignified — pointing to the embarrassment of the current investigation into the behavior of suspended District Judge Elizabeth Halverson, an “outsider” whom the bar did not consider a serious candidate.

They are less likely to mention that many of our judges are appointed, already — that it’s standard procedure for jurists to leave the bench before the end of their terms, so the governor and the Bar Association can hand-pick a replacement, who then runs with the considerable advantage of incumbency.

It’s rare enough to see a true, contested campaign in which a fresh new face has a fair chance to unseat some well-connected incumbent who’s come to treat the bench as his personal property.

But it does still happen, from time to time. Is that really such a bad thing?