Voice For Liberty

Tag: Judicial selection

  • Libertarian campaign visits Wichita

    Libertarian campaign visits Wichita

    In Wichita Story, Tim O’Bryhim reports on the visit of the Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate to Wichita:

    “It is another hot August day in Kansas; a good day to be inside. But a crowd gathers in the (sadly only proverbial) shadow of the Keeper of the Plains to welcome Spike Cohen, the vice-presidential candidate of the third largest political party in the United States of America. If elections were the Olympics, the Libertarian Party would proudly climb on the medals stand every four years with a bronze medal around its neck. But in American politics, third place is almost always a distant finish.”

    Click on Libertarian VP Candidate Spike Cohen Rallies Wichita Supporters Amidst a Hostile Electoral System.

  • WichitaLiberty.TV: Judicial selection in Kansas

    WichitaLiberty.TV: Judicial selection in Kansas

    In this episode of WichitaLiberty.TV: Attorney Richard Peckham joins Karl Peterjohn and Bob Weeks to discuss judicial selection and other judicial issues in Kansas. View below, or click here to view at YouTube. Episode 176, broadcast December 16, 2017.

    Shownotes

  • Did the Kansas Supreme Court read these cases?

    Did the Kansas Supreme Court read these cases?

    The merit system of judicial selection in Kansas has sprung a leak, finds the United States Supreme Court.

    One of the purported benefits of the merit system of judicial selection in Kansas is that it produces quality jurists who rule on the law, not on their personal beliefs or ideologies.

    But a recent case shows otherwise. Following, a selection of dialog between Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt and United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:1

    JUSTICE SCALIA: Did the Kansas Supreme Court read these cases?
    MR. SCHMIDT: Perhaps I ought not answer that, Justice Scalia, but —
    JUSTICE SCALIA: How can you explain it if — if indeed our prior cases are so clear on the point?
    MR. SCHMIDT: Justice Scalia, I, of course, don’t —
    JUSTICE SCALIA: They don’t like the death penalty.

    Here, in one exchange, Scalia exposes the legal incompetence of the Kansas Supreme Court because they rule based on their policy preferences, not the law. “Did the Kansas Supreme Court read these cases?” That’s a question a law school professor asks a lazy student. It shouldn’t need to be asked of justices on the highest court in Kansas.

    But the United States Supreme Court found it necessary to ask if Kansas judges were reading their cases. This is precisely what the merit system is supposed to avoid.

    For more on this see this video from Joseph Ashby.

    —
    Notes

    1. Oral arguments in Kansas v. Gleason and Kansas v. Carr, October 7, 2015. http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2015/14-452_b18j.pdf. ↩
  • Kansas Supreme Court: Making the law

    Kansas Supreme Court: Making the law

    Do the justices on the Kansas Supreme Court make new law? Yes, and here is an example. View below, or here at YouTube.

    For more on this issue, see Kansas Supreme Court: Making law, part 2.