(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Dec. 28, 2015)
Round one of the “who’s in charge” bout between the Kansas Legislature and the Kansas Judiciary went to the Judiciary on a 7-0 vote last week when justices decided that lawmakers stepped across the constitutional “separation of powers” boundary by telling the court who will select chief judges of the state’s 31 judicial districts.
It was meddling in the operation of a unified judicial department that the constitution clearly doesn’t allow. So, that legislative plan to allow district court judges to vote among themselves to select their district leaders is out the window, though it did have some relatively nice-sounding “local control” aspects.
For most Kansans, the decision on who is the chief judge of their district court is not only not a big deal, but next time you’re after a bet you think you can win, ask your neighbor whom the chief judge is…and we’re betting that you’ll get no answer. Unless you are a lawyer, or another judge, or maybe the guy at the courthouse who assigns parking spaces, you have no reason to know who the chief is.