Kansas voters will soon be asked whether our state should abandon its current merit-based system for selecting Kansas Supreme Court justices and replace it with direct elections. Before making that change to our constitution, Kansans should remember why our current system exists.
Some critics suggest Kansas is an outlier because it uses a nominating commission to screen applicants for the Kansas Supreme Court. That criticism is misleading. Across the country, 34 states and the District of Columbia use independent nominating commissions or merit-based appointment systems in some form to help select high court judges. The details vary from state to state, but Kansas is hardly alone in recognizing that judicial selection should be different from political campaigning.
The reason is simple: judges are not legislators. They do not run on policy platforms. They do not promise outcomes. They do not have constituents. They do not represent political parties, interest groups, donors, or popular causes. Their duty is to apply the law fairly and impartially, even when doing so is unpopular.
Kansas’s current system is designed with that duty in mind. Applicants for the Kansas Supreme Court are reviewed based on qualifications, experience, temperament, fairness, and impartiality, true characteristics to seek in a judge. Popularity and how well one can campaign are not important traits for a judge to possess. The nominating commission evaluates candidates and forwards names to the governor. After appointment, justices still face the voters through retention elections. That process provides both careful screening and public accountability.
This system was not imposed on Kansans. Kansans chose it.
For roughly the first 100 years of statehood, Kansas elected its Supreme Court justices. In 1958, after a political scandal exposed the dangers of allowing partisan politics to influence the state’s highest court, Kansas voters approved merit selection. That was not a rejection of democracy. It was democracy in action. Kansans looked at the problem and chose a system intended to protect the independence and integrity of the judiciary.
A Kansas Chamber of Commerce brochure from the 1958 campaign summarized the concern well:
“What’s Wrong with Electing Judges? First, the partisan elective process puts the judiciary into politics. Candidates for legislative or executive offices may run on the basis of advocacy of certain policies; a judge should have no policy other than to administer the law honestly and competently. Judges should not be influenced by political alliances or political debts.”
Those words remain just as true today.
Electing Kansas Supreme Court justices would require judicial candidates to campaign, raise money, seek endorsements, respond to political attacks, and appeal to voters in the same way candidates for political office do. That is not a small procedural change. It changes the public’s perception of the court itself. It risks turning judges into politicians in black robes.
Public confidence in our courts depends on the belief that judges decide cases without bias based on the law and the facts, not on campaign contributions, political alliances, or the pressure of the next election. At a time when trust in public institutions is already strained, Kansas should be cautious before dismantling a system created to keep the judiciary independent.
The current merit-selection system was adopted for good reason. It has served Kansas for decades. Replacing it with direct elections would not be progress. It would be a step backward. Please vote no on Aug. 4.
Patty Macke Dick, retired judge
Buhler