Opinion: Assault on the judiciary

The Legislature lost no time living down to one of its worst expectations. Only hours into the session, a scheme to politicize Florida's courts churned out of the House Committee on Judicial Oversight on a 6-4 vote with only one Republican, Chairman Larry Crow, opposing it.

The bill would give Gov. Jeb Bush and his successors the power to appoint all nine members of each judicial nominating commission with no more input from the Florida Bar, and no more staggered terms. That would convert the commissions into glorified patronage committees. It would be no more wrong, and much more candid, to simply abolish them. But that would require a constitutional amendment and the voters' approval.

The bill is on a fast track to the House floor, where Speaker Tom Feeney's opening remarks Tuesday paid respects to the courts in much the same way Marc Antony praised the "honorable men" who slew Caesar.

The mob's intended victim this time is the independence of Florida's judiciary, and it's not just the religious right that hopes to gloat over the corpse. The Christian Coalition lay low Tuesday as powerful business allies -- the Retail Federation, the Chamber of Commerce and the so-called "tort reform" coalition -- threw their weight behind Rep. Frederick C. Brummer's HB 367. Their common interest is in packing the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, with people suitably supine on such issues as personal injury and the separation of church and state.

There's even worse stuff on the committee's agenda, including proposals to elect Supreme Court justices, but HB 367 poses the greatest threat of passage. Two years ago, Brummer got a less radical version all the way through the House and onto the Senate's special order calendar before Bush pulled the plug on it. That bill would have dumped the former governor's judicial nominating commissioners, three on each panel, before their terms expired, but the Bar's Board of Governors would have continued to appoint its three, and the commissions would have continued to choose three more members from the public. Brummer's new bill puts an end to anyone's role but the governor's.

Bar President Herman Russomanno did not exaggerate when he pleaded that Brummer's bill would set Florida justice back 30 years. The last Supreme Court justice appointed without the say-so of an independent nominating commission was a political hack who resigned in the face of certain -- and well-deserved -- impeachment. Two of his elected colleagues resigned under ethical clouds of their own.

A new governor, Reubin Askew, took in the rotten scene and established the commissions by executive order. At the first opportunity, he had them written into the Constitution. Not until now has that historic and heroic decision been in such mortal danger.

Brummer and his cronies argue that the nominating commissions are political, too. But there's far less to fear from the Bar's politics than from the other lobbies that would whisper into a governor's ear. Moreover, legislators have nothing but scattered anecdotes to demonize the supposed influence of the Bar and large law firms.

Chairman William Huffcut of the 2nd Circuit Nominating Commission at Tallahassee pointed out Tuesday that he and four other members, a majority, are non-lawyers. "I have never felt that the Bar controlled what we are doing," he said.

The committee was unwilling to let facts interfere with a lynching.

A word from Bush could still stop it, but the governor's office refuses to say where he stands. Legislators will take his silence for assent. So will the public.

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