Guest Column: Missouri perilously close to losing model system

Most folks rarely see the inside of the courthouse, but when that unpleasantness happens, the abiding belief that justice will prevail gives both sides hope, as few litigants doubt the justness of their cause. At least, this is the Missouri experience.
In this state, our judges enjoy great respect and admiration. Scandal and corruption and public disdain has visited judiciaries in other states, but not in ours. Well, at least not since 1940.
The Pendergast political machine that controlled Kansas City and Missouri politics for much of the early 20th Century was so powerful that Tom Pendergast chose our governor and Supreme Court judges. We elected all of our judges in Missouri back then, or at least thought we did. Actually, the Pendergast machine counted the ballots, so the voter was little more than a nuisance. If the electorate was an afterthought, so too was the Constitution and the law, for corrupt Pendergast judges decided the big cases.
In 1940, in a stroke of genius, and in response to the Pendergast stench, the Missouri electorate changed the Missouri Constitution and implemented the first merit-based system of judicial selection in the United States.
Technically called the Non Partisan Court Plan, but more popularly known as the Missouri Plan, more than 30 states have since followed suit and modeled their systems after ours.
In Missouri, the governor appoints all appellate judges and judges serving in St. Louis, Greene County and the Kansas City area, but the governor’s power is restricted. The General Assembly has no role to play at all. In other words, politics as is so often practiced by governor and by members of the General Assembly is avoided under the Missouri Plan. Instead of deciding cases based on political considerations, our esteemed judges make decisions based on the Constitution and the law.
Now, we have fair and impartial judges who don’t owe favors to politicians or big campaign contributors. But that may soon change.
Last week in Jefferson City, a proposed constitutional amendment that would gut the Missouri Plan passed the House and will likely be voted on in the Senate in the next few weeks. Known as HJR 10, this bill would take us back toward a judicial selection system we abandoned before the Civil War. It would give the General Assembly vast control over our judiciary, and it would greatly enhance the Governor’s judicial selection power. In short, politics will be back in business in our courtrooms.
We are perilously close to changing the character of our proud judiciary. We should not allow narrow interests to dismantle an enormously successful and often imitated system of judicial selection. Should HJR 10 become law, then the only hope you will have when you enter the courthouse is that your lawyer is as politically connected as the judge about to hear your case.