‘Take Back the Courts’ for whom?
Last night in Wichita marked the kickoff of what’s sure to be another big-money, shove-it-down-our-throats campaign to weaponize every element of the justice system for crass and transient political reasons.
As with other recent attempts to force radical political agendas, it has a deceptively pleasant moniker. Like the failed “Value Them Both” movement that sought to restrict women’s rights while saying it was protecting them, the “Take Back the Bench” movement has a similar hidden agenda.
By transforming the Kansas Supreme Court into yet another political entity, it seeks to take the courts back not for the people but so they can bend to the whims of people like billionaire Elon Musk, who spent millions unsuccessfully trying to influence a state supreme court election in Wisconsin and even publicly bribed voters to vote for candidates he supported.
If you like Kansas’ overly politicized state legislature, which accomplishes very little except what key power brokers want, you’ll love the politicized state supreme court that Take Back the Bench would create.
If anyone were to be expected to support changes that would make judgeships elected positions, you might think it would be this newspaper. We, after all, were victims of a justice system in which key officials failed to do their job in allowing fatally flawed search warrants to be approved.
A disciplinary panel’s ruling that a judge did nothing wrong in approving warrants but in the future would be advised to actually read them before signing them was a pretty strong indictment of the system.
But making the highest judicial positions in the state elected, so their opinions can be swayed by big-money interests funding their campaigns, isn’t the answer. The hen house may need policing, but not by the fox.
What sounds like a commonsense measure is in fact supported by a coalition of radicals, from “Krazy” Kris Kobach, a dedicated supporter of every political overreach by President Donald Trump, to the Charles Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, which labeled Trump a “bad candidate” for president and which Trump labeled as “stupid” and “played by suckers.”
“Take Back the Bench” is, just like “Value Them Both,” another attempt to eliminate women’s rights, but this one is even more dangerous because it also would eliminate one of the greatest safeguards within democracy — that of a truly independent judiciary.
Don’t be fooled by innocent-sounding names or the fact that the ballot issue is being hidden in next year’s primary election, where turnout except among those with more radical agendas typically is low.
“Take Back the Bench” will hand what often is the last bastion of reason and prudence in our democracy over to radical, big-money interests. It will weaponize the intended counterweight of our court system so that all of government can march in lockstep — some might say goosestep — to whatever tunes power brokers desire.
— ERIC MEYER