As the Montana Legislature meets again, a handful of Republicans are promoting bills to change the way that Montanans elect our judges. These Republicans want to change judicial elections from non-partisan to partisan because they don’t like the way judges across Montana have struck down a handful of previously passed bills as unconstitutional.
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts noted in his “2024 Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary” that: “tension between the branches of the government is inevitable and criticism of judicial interpretations of the people’s laws is as old as the Republic itself.” Roberts referenced Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Paper No. 78 that stated: “there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.”
In our hyper-politicized world, forcing judges to align with and campaign on a partisan political ticket would further undermine public confidence in judicial rulings.
If our judges were aligned with a political party, a person involved in a case may rightfully wonder if his or her particular judge’s decision was based on the law and facts of the case or by a worry about keeping the local Republican or Democrat Central Committees happy. A losing litigant might claim, “I would have won that case except the judge was of the opposite political party than I am, so was biased.”
What have been the reports from states that have tried partisan judicial elections? In 2019, then Republican Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court Nathan Hecht called partisan judicial elections “among the very worst methods of judicial selection.”
One may not agree with every court decision and that’s why there’s an appeals process. But disagreeing with a court decision does not mean the court isn’t doing its duty as an independent branch of government tasked with interpreting laws and upholding constitutional rights, regardless of what’s politically popular in the moment.
Standing with the Constitution and for maintaining the checks and balances that have allowed our country to be the most prosperous country in the history of the world and protecting liberty from the tyranny of mob rule is patriotic. The alternative is being with those who are pursuing a radical partisan political agenda or more political power at any cost.
Contact your legislators and let them know we need to keep judicial elections non-partisan.
Joel Krautter lives in Billings and is a Montana attorney, former State Representative and a co-founder of Friends of the Montana Constitution.
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