A little more than a year ago, Sen. Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks and chair of the Senate Finance Committee, introduced a Senate Joint Resolution that \u201cis a sure road to destruction of judicial independence,\u201d according to former Alaska Supreme Court Chief Justice Bud Carpeneti.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a really bad idea to mess around with Article IV of our constitution,\u201d Carpeneti said to a crowd of business leaders at the weekly Juneau Chamber of Commerce luncheon Thursday.<\/p>\n
Article IV is the judiciary article of the Alaska Constitution, and it lays out the process of how the governor is to fill judicial vacancies. It describes the composition and role of the seven-member Alaska Judicial Council that nominates judicial candidates, and it establishes judicial term limits and the retention-or-rejection process.<\/p>\n
According to Carpeneti, it \u201cis the envy of the nation\u201d and the reason why Alaska has a \u201ccorruption-free\u201d judicial system.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving worked so well \u2014 and I believe it has \u2014 why does anybody want to change this?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
During his talk, Carpeneti deconstructed the argument supporting Kelly\u2019s Senate Joint Resolution.<\/p>\n
The three-point argument, as Carpeneti tells it, holds that:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Attorneys, who make up three of the seven positions on the council and are appointed by the state bar, dominate the council,<\/p>\n
\u2022 The Chief Justice, who sits on the council in a tie-breaking capacity acts as a gatekeeper, limiting the number of judge candidates sent before the governor,<\/p>\n
\u2022 There is a lack of rural representation on the council,<\/p>\n
In order to fix these perceived problems, the resolution proposes adding three non-attorney positions \u2014 in addition to the three that already exist \u2014 all of which would be filled by governor appointment. Additionally, all appointments, attorney and non-attorney, will be subject to Legislature approval.<\/p>\n
The problem is, Carpeneti said, \u201cnone of these hold water.\u201d \u201cWhen you look at the numbers, it just doesn\u2019t add up at all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Of the 1,171 votes the council has taken part in, council members have voted unanimously or unanimously with the exception of one member 81 percent of the time, he said. There has been a three-three split between the attorney and non-attorney members in less than 1.4 percent of all votes. This, Carpeneti said, shows that the attorney members are not frequently overpowering their public peers.<\/p>\n
The position of the chief justice has had to break a tie in less than 6 percent of all votes, showing that the chief justice is not the strict \u201cgate-keeper\u201d he or she is made out to be, Carpeneti argued.<\/p>\n
Overall, Kelly\u2019s proposed changes would make judicial appointments more political, which could even hurt businesses, Carpeneti said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBusinesses depend on a stable judiciary of the highest quality, not one weakened by inappropriate political considerations,\u201d he said. \u201cYou want technicians, competent judges that are not wedded to one side or another and they have someone looking over their shoulder.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is why Carpeneti, who is now retired, founded Justice Not Politics Alaska, a nonpartisan group of Alaskans trying to fight Kelly\u2019s resolution.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are involved in politics because we don\u2019t want judges to be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kelly\u2019s Senate Joint Resolution 3 places a constitutional amendment on the next general election ballot that allows the voters to decide whether the membership of the judicial council should require the legislative confirmation, and whether it should be expanded to include three additional public (non-attorney) members.<\/p>\n
In the original sponsor statement, Kelly said emphasized that it would increase the public\u2019s voice on the council, diversify the council and fix the \u201cstark glaring oversight\u201d of the lack of legislative confirmation of council members, which is required for every other Alaskan regulatory or quasi-judicial agency according to the constitution.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or at sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A little more than a year ago, Sen. Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks and chair of the Senate Finance Committee, introduced a Senate Joint Resolution that \u201cis a sure road to destruction of judicial independence,\u201d according to former Alaska Supreme Court Chief Justice Bud Carpeneti. \u201cIt\u2019s a really bad idea to mess around with Article IV of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-13180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13180"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=13180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}