A pair of bills would chip away more of the Governor's authority
Published March 3, 2017
by Doug Clark, Greensboro News-Record, March 1, 2017.
Here we go again. More proposed fiddling with the courts by our legislature.
Two bills filed today would transfer from the governor to the legislature the power to appoint District Court judges and special Superior Court judges when vacancies occur.
District Court judges would still be elected to regular four-year terms. As the law stands now, if a judge vacates a seat before the end of his or her term, the governor chooses a temporary replacement.
This process has worked well. I thought that Gov. Pat McCrory, aided by his able legal counsel Bob Stephens, made credible appointments to fill vacancies in Guilford County. When she was governor, Bev Perdue did the same. Gov. Roy Cooper has not had an opportunity yet to make an appointment here.
Currently, the law requires the local Bar to submit five recommendations to the governor when a vacancy occurs. The governor doesn't have to select one of the five, but McCrory always did.
The bill filed today would eliminate any role played by local lawyers. The legislature could make the selection with no input from the Bar.
The second bill would have the legislature instead of the governor appoint unelected special Superior Court judges, including those designated by the chief justice to serve as business court judges.
Both these measures are meant to further erode the power of the governor and to further strengthen the legislative branch.
While that motive is transparent, the reason for a third bill filed today is not clear to me.
It would reduce the size of the Court of Appeals from 15 judges to 12 and accomplish that basically through attrition via retirement, resignation, death, etc.
The Court of Appeals has a very heavy workload, but this bill may intend to shift some COA cases to the Supreme Court through an expanded "appeal of right" directly to the high court, bypassing the intermediate appeals court.
I've left a message for Rep. Sarah Stevens, one of the primary sponsors, asking for clarification.
The Supreme Court may have some spare caseload capacity, so this bill might make sense.
The first two, not so much, in my opinion.
http://www.greensboro.com/blogs/clark_off_the_record/a-pair-of-bills-would-chip-away-a-little-more/article_878906d0-fecc-11e6-a8a5-4746d582892e.html
