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Liberty Opinion: 18 February 2008
Locking the courthouse door may seem like a lousy way to insure fair justice for all, but holding secret hearings on one of the state's most controversial issues is exactly what the Kansas Supreme Court is doing, writes Denis Boyles.
Topeka’s Star Chamber
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Here’s a short list of places where secret court proceedings are
not unknown:
Most of us don’t trust courts that operate in the dark. Americans,
observed Justice Hugo Black 60 years ago, have a “historic
distrust of secret proceedings, their inherent dangers to freedom, and
the universal requirement of our federal and state governments that
criminal trials be public.”
All those secretive Syrians and enigmatic North Koreans
probably would beg to differ, but, to paraphrase everybody’s favorite
Sunflower cliché, what’s up with Kansas? How did it hop
onto that short list of kangaroo judiciaries?
Back in June 2007, Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri
filed charges in the Kansas Supreme Court against former Attorney
General and Johnson County District Attorney
It’s risky business when courts invite ridicule, but at the
Kansas Supreme Court, the invitation’s a standing one. Because of the
eccentricities of state law, none of the supreme court’s justices have
ever been vetted by elected representatives. As many critics,
including KU law
professor Stephen J. Ware, have complained, there’s no confirmation
process at all—the governor appoints them and there they sit, sometimes
dozing through cases that often seem to have already been decided by
some backroom handshake.
Because Kansas has never had a conservative governor,
there’s not even much political diversity on the court. All the members
are in general agreement on the way things ought to be in Kansas—in
fact, in 2005, they even started passing legislation of their own,
deciding to the penny how much the state should spend on educating
kids. Most of them have, at one time or other, made clear their
impatience with wing-nuts and others who disagree with
them.
You’d think conservatives would be pleased with a court that
has moved so far back in time that its hearings resemble the Star
Chamber trials that ended the reign—and the life—of Britain’s Charles I
back in the 1600s.
But no. This afternoon, Rep. Lance
Kinzer’s House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings—public’s
invited, of course—on HB 2825, a crowbar bill that would pry open
courtroom doors across the state by limiting the ability of judges to
conduct secret trials and hearings or have their pleadings
sealed.
The Planned Parenthood v Kline case triggered Kinzer’s
concern, but, as he wrote in an email, the bill is “more of an
open [government] issue than a pro-life issue.” In a statement released
yesterday, Kinzer wrote, “The public has a fundamental interest
in all cases that are submitted to a court for resolution…It is an
unfortunate reality today that many of the most important public policy
issues facing our State are being decided by courts. As such it is more
important than ever that our judicial process is open and
accessible.”
An open court presided over by justices who have been
through a public confirmation process? There’s a wild and crazy idea,
one that’s never been tried in Teheran—or in Topeka.
Denis Boyles, who comments on the media and the Midwest for National Review Online, also writes the Monday, Monday column for Kansas Liberty. He’s the author of Superior, Nebraska, an oddly-titled book mostly about Kansas. |
