A return to the darker ages seems to be in season. In Topeka it began in January when the Kansas Senate banned reporters from the Senate floor. The eviction followed a similar banishment of reporters in Iowa and appeared to be part of a multi-state effort by Republicans to target the news media. In turn this targets the citizenry by denying access to reporters who serve as its proxy.
So much for “transparency,” the Republicans’ current watchword.
As Europe is dragged back to the Stalin era, Topeka follows a similar but bloodless timeline. Party power here is secured by revising current law in a Republican rendition of state security. It starts by subverting our elections and next, by shoving the courts into the political arena.
A plan to amplify voter suppression – quash ballot boxes, repress ballot calendars and deadlines, strangle participation – is en route to the statute books. House Bill 2056 cuts the registration period, reducing voter access. Among other interference, the bill abolishes the three-day grace period for ballots arriving by mail; advanced ballot drop boxes are limited to one drop box per 30,000 Kansans. (Welcome back to Dodge City 2018 and its lone polling station.)
The bill cuts the number of drop boxes in at least 30 counties with special suppressions for rural voters. It adds no new protections for elections but puts new pressures and costs on election administrators. Local election officials oppose the restrictions. Secretary of State Scott Schwab has said that if these strictures had been in effect in the 2020 election, the votes of more than 30,000 Kansans would have been tossed.
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Republican leaders have sponsored resolutions to erase sovereignty for the state’s highest court, and demand that justices declare party affiliation and run for office. The resolutions are to be on ballots in the state’s August 6 primary election.
One resolution would dissolve the Supreme Court Nominating Commission, a lay-lawyer panel that screens nominees and sends three finalists to the governor, who selects one for appointment to the high court. The justices serve six-year terms and are retained or not by public vote as their terms expire. This merit-based nomination and retention system began in 1958; it is non-political and it has worked well since.
For years, Republicans have been angry with the courts, especially the Supreme Court. The judicial branch has countered their efforts to starve local schools, to outlaw all abortion in Kansas, and to play fast and loose with the state budget, among other things.
In 2016 the party cooked up a committee, “Kansans for Justice,” and spent a lot of money campaigning against five justices up for retention. They had hoped to defeat incumbents and pack the Court with justices appointed by then-Gov. Sam Brownback, who yearned for ways to advance his pious social engineering. The plan failed. Voters retained the justices.
The current resolutions advance the question whether citizens want even more power for a political party, or a separate and sovereign Court.
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Courts are busy places, hallowed sanctums that resolve disputes, hear criminal trials, dispense justice and defend liberties, directing judgment on behalf of the people. Matters in court are often mangled with complexities and contingencies that can take months or years to untangle. Resolving those quandaries can leave lives ruined or remade, saved or lost. Justice is not for the weak at heart or mind.
The courts comprise a branch of government away from the corrosions of politics, the craven impulses of cause lobbies and special interests. They should be left to advance only the law as determined by expert professionals. Politics may motivate the legislative and executive branches of government but the courts are the measure of democracy, not its marionette. The courts are a cradle of equity, the last thread of hope in the people’s desire for a fair shake. The judiciary must be spared the fetid swamps of ward heeling.
The Republican plan is wrong. The courts – and especially the Supreme Court – are increasingly asked to settle fierce issues that the legislature cannot or will not resolve. The courts examine the law for answers. They do not examine lists of campaign donors.
That’s why an impartial and non-political Court is crucial in government. Its assignment, to understand and underpin our certain rights, should be left to professionals educated and experienced in the matters of law.
The High Court must remain above the sordid mechanics of political hacks. The courts are an instrument and arbiter of law. Without the courts there is no law, and with no law we are left to the sharp warring of political tribes, leaving little room for justice and even less for the people who need it.
