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Monday, June 15, 2009
Courts - More on effort to abolish "Missouri plan" in Tennessee
On May 27, 2007, the ILB had this entry, headed "Tennessee's 'Missouri plan' for judicial selection expires."
Today an unsigned opinion piece in the WSJ begins:
Tennessee is moving the dial on how it chooses judges, changing parts of the so-called merit selection method that has governed the state for decades. Under a new plan approved by the legislature on Friday, the lawyers who have dominated judicial selection are getting put back in their place.Tennessee's "Missouri plan" looks to have been quite different from Indiana's. For instance, in Indiana interviews of applications by the Judicial Nominating Commission are open to the public, they are not conducted behind closed doors.The extraordinary influence of the bar is a hallmark of the judicial selection method used by more than two dozen states. Sometimes called the Missouri Plan for its state of origin, a slate of potential nominees is chosen by a judicial nominating commission and presented to the Governor for a pick. Designed to reduce the pull of politics on judges, the plan instead gave power to lawyers who sat on the commissions and pushed state courts to the left.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 15, 2009 02:02 PM
Posted to Courts in general