In a candid interview with Arkansas' Newspaper just before Christmas Day, the incoming chief justice of the state's Supreme Court leveled with readers about what they could expect from his administration of the high court. That's right: his administration of the court, not any judicial decisions he and his colleagues would be handing down. All of that, the Hon. Dan Kemp is judicious enough to know, should be reserved till the court's decisions are handed down. Conversations in chambers should remain just that: in chambers. That way, the justices can float their best ideas, and their worst, without making them the law of the land, or rather state.
As for the new chief justice's highly successful campaign for the court--he got more than 57 percent of the vote--let it be noted that he was running against an opponent with a lot of experience on the court. Unfortunately for her, the Hon. Courtney Goodson's experience was the chief argument against her. For the things voters might have had uppermost in their minds as they cast their ballots was her checkered past, notably her marital connection with class-action king John Goodson. A federal judge found that John Goodson, his law partner, and a trio of other lawyers had "abused the judicial process, and did so in bad faith." It was too much to ask that the state's electorate erase all that from their minds and not make the connection between Justice Goodson and her spouse.
What a contrast with the notion the Hon. and honorable Dan Kemp, a scholarly looking elder in the Church of Christ, would be mixed up with characters like the Goodsons and taking untraceable "dark money" to finance his campaign. The whole idea was laughable to those of us who followed his campaign and hers.
Of course Dan Kemp would favor the popular election of appellate judges instead of government by, for and of appointed judges. He says he would favor a transparent system that just lets the electorate know who's giving how much to which candidates. Money, the mother's milk of politics, will go where it must--like water seeking its own level. Just follow it and that should tell all of us who are the best candidates for the judiciary and who are the worst. Which is just what the voters intuited. The result was a happy ending all around, with the winner getting his just deserts and the loser hers.
"Now I could foresee if someone is appointed to that position," the judge told the paper, "they're not going to be out campaigning and hearing the thoughts of the general public, the people, about what they think about the court system. Because as a judge you're isolated to a great extent about what information you're going to get. But when you're out campaigning, you get an opportunity to get that because people freely give you their opinions on the court system. Like I mentioned just a moment ago, I found that people thought the court was making up the rules as they go, but they do have these unwritten rules that they go by. It may be just a matter of letting people know they do have these rules, so the people are aware."
For here, as it says on the Democrat-Gazette's front page every day, Regnat Populus, or The People Rule--though they may have to be given the simple facts about a case or an election before drawing conclusions. Whatever their differences in politics, people of quality seem to have no problem identifying one another even in the madding crowd. Something tells us judges of character would have no problem picking Don Kemp--or Courtney Goodson--out of the madding crowd. Birds of a feather, whether high-flying hawks or low buzzards, still flock together.
Some things just do not change over the years and decades. And one of them is how much the things our leaders do, good and bad, shape this state. Arkansas has produced great legal minds like Richard Arnold, perhaps the greatest of them all, and politicians who embody the worst in us like Orval Faubus, who won election after election, beating his opponents like a drum. In the end, what guarantee do We the People have against disastrous leaders except the character and integrity of the good ones?
Don Kemp is one of the good guys and, indeed, one of the best. For the signs are all there. Like candor, judgment, and a preference for plain-spoken, homey truths over the elaborate games that others may play with the law. Whatever their political differences, lawmakers and leaders who may see things from very different vantage points seem to recognize each other as quality. It's a trait that distinguishes them. They share a mutual respect, and a respect for the people, that marks them as different, as better than the run-of-the-mill.
Of course the discerning voter will support such leaders. Whatever his own shortcomings. For who wants to be represented by someone only as good as he is? No, the best of citizens would much prefer to follow his betters than settle for a reflection of his own prejudices. We surely would prefer to be lifted up rather than held down to the standards reflected in our own mirror image. Or would we? That's the question every election, judicial and otherwise, raises. And how we answer it may determine the future of this all too representative republic.
Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 01/08/2017