In opposition to public justice
State lawmakers are so caught up in the haggling and horse trading of redistributing private-sector wealth, growing bureaucracies and rewarding special interests that they’ve forgotten the core purpose of government: to protect the rights of citizens.
And on Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee ran its mission statement through the shredder.
On a 4-3, party-line vote, Republicans on the panel killed Assembly Bill 519, which would have required judges to have public hearings on motions to seal court records, and if such a motion is granted, to declare why. Even though a Review-Journal investigation found that Clark County judges have sealed 115 civil lawsuits since 2000, either to protect wealthy parties from embarrassment or for reasons never disclosed, these four lawmakers declared that oversight of the judiciary is still best left to … the judiciary itself.
Committee Chairman Mark Amodei, R-Carson City; Sen. Mike McGinness, R-Fallon; Sen. Dennis Nolan, R-Las Vegas; and Sen. Maurice Washington, R-Sparks, said that because the Nevada Supreme Court has assembled a special commission to examine whether, when and how public court records should be sealed, the Legislature has no compelling reason to act on the bill.
Sen. Amodei said the bill might violate the separation of powers doctrine because it allows the legislative branch to dictate the policy of the judicial branch.
“The court is taking a look at it,” Sen. McGinness said. “Let the judges decide when to close records. It is their bailiwick.”
Have four Nevada lawmakers ever displayed such ignorance of basic civics?
The separation of powers concept does not demand that one branch of government have unchecked power and unaccountable independence from the other two. Instead, it depends upon a system of checks and balances to give “each a constitutional control over the others,” as James Madison wrote. The doctrine exists to prevent one branch of government from obtaining the kind of power the Nevada judiciary has been exercising at will — the kind of power the Senate Judiciary Committee just sanctioned.
Rather than impose a common-sense restraint on the judiciary that ensures a default setting of openness in the courts, Sens. Amodei, McGinness, Nolan and Washington embraced Star Chamber justice. For heaven’s sake, AB519 is such a slam dunk the Assembly passed the bill 39-2.
As we wrote barely more than one week ago: “The courts are funded by the public to do justice in public. The public — having delegated to these judges literally the power of life and death — has a right to watch and make sure justice is done, and to vote out any judge who fails to meet their standards of equity and propriety.”
Yes, the state judiciary does have limited authority to conduct court operations in the best, most efficient way it sees fit. But it can do so only within the confines of the law, and the creation of the law is the sole responsibility of the legislative branch of government. Even though the Nevada Supreme Court’s special commission plans to debate the sealing of court records, lawmakers have an obligation to send that commission and the justices of the high court a strong message with the force of law: the courts are no place for secrecy and special favors for the powerful.
Clark County Chief District Judge Kathy Hardcastle stated in a hearing that she opposed AB519 because openness can be “difficult to deal with,” and that courts are a “place for people to bring their private disputes” without “giving up all their rights to privacy.” It was perhaps the most inane argument presented by an elected official this legislative session.
Yet state Sens. Amodei, McGinness, Nolan and Washington bought it.
