Editorials

Let the people rule

In other words, Regnat Populus

It happens with remarkable but not assuring regularity. Once a candidate for the state's Supreme Court gets elected, no matter how dirty a campaign he might have waged for his seat on the high court, a transformation begins to take place over the years, at the end of which he emerges--at least in his own eyes--a great champion of ethics.

For example, one former chief justice and now whited sepulchre proposed that the bar association set up a foundation to assess the fairness of rhetoric in campaigns for judicial office. Which comes a little too close to messing with free speech for some tastes, including our own. That bad idea is best forgotten and happily may have been. For it hasn't been sighted in some time, and the longer it stays off the radar screen called the news, the better for Arkansas and the First Amendment.

Now another and worse idea has surfaced at the Legislature, a proposal to change the way Arkansas elects justices of the high court. Not in a free and open election, but a step-by-step process in which various "experts," including, yes, representatives of the state's bar association, would choose a limited number of candidates--three--and the governor would get to pick one for the high court. Then, after the voters okayed the governor's pick, all the people could do in the future would be to either re-elect or reject the now sitting justice, and rejection in such staged circumstances would be highly unlikely. In short, the deck would have been stacked.

Yes, the people may have made some bad choices in the past--who hasn't? Remember the Hon. Jim Johnson? But at least he was the people's choice, not that of a committee of "experts" who may be more cronies than experts. Which is why this idea is best forgotten in a state whose motto is Regnat Populus, for here the people rule, or are supposed to. Let them.

Editorial on 02/20/2015

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