For two-and-a-half centuries, the South Carolina Legislature has wielded enormous power over state government.
Now, in both political parties, some elected officials want to see a power shift, mainly over the judicial election process. They’re directing those calls to the people who vet and elect most judges in South Carolina: state lawmakers.
"In South Carolina, the Legislature runs the state, and this goes back to King George III. The founders of our state said we don't want an executive who has power. And so, for almost the first century after independence, the governor was elected by the Legislature," said Cindi Ross Scoppe, an editorial writer for the Charleston Post and Courier, who has covered the Legislature for more than three decades.
"For the century after that, the governor had so few powers that it didn't matter who elected the governor. It wasn't until (the State House corruption investigation) Operation Lost Trust, around 1990, that the Legislature finally was forced to start giving up some power, to share some power with the governor."
This month in Charleston, with dozens of lawmakers in attendance, Attorney General Alan Wilson proposed an overhaul of the process.
His ideas include:
- Giving the governor full appointment power over the makeup of the Judicial Merit Selection Commission, a 10-member panel that vets judicial candidates, decides whether they’re qualified and forwards their candidacies to a final vote. Among the panel’s members includes six lawmakers, all of whom are lawyers.
- Removing the three limit cap on the number of candidates who can run in a race
- Allowing the 170-member Legislature to still have final say over judges
Wilson said the time is right for change and said people are ready for reform.
“I don’t look at this as the blues versus the reds, or any particular demographic versus another demographic," Wilson said. "I look at this as just men and women who want to make government better."
Wilson is far from the only public official to call for a shift in power over judicial elections.
South Carolina sheriffs, prosecutors, state lawmakers and even Gov. Henry McMaster have signaled to lawmakers that they’d like to see a shake up based on a variety of reasons:
- Transparency
- The ethics of lawyer-legislators deciding who becomes a judge
- The January state Supreme Court decision that overturned a six-week abortion ban
- The controversial early prison release of an inmate convicted of murder
“It appears that the confidence in this arrangement is waning,” McMaster told lawmakers in January during his annual State of the State address.
"The governor doesn't have, when all is said and done, a whole lot of control over that judicial branch. There's no overt check there, like appointments," said Fred Carter, president of Francis Marion University, who served in two gubernatorial administrations and has written about gubernatorial power and privilege.
Later this year, the Judicial Merit Selection Commission will meet to vet dozens of judicial candidates, including a new Supreme Court chief justice.
To change the makeup of the Judicial Merit Selection Commission, better known as the JMSC, it takes an act of the Legislature and a change to the law.
So far, there’s no real consensus over whether lawmakers are ready to remove themselves from JMSC.
Scoppe said it’s possible lawmakers could agree to cede JMSC appointment powers to the governor. She added it’s likelier than the Legislature giving the governor the OK to appoint judges.
“Power is always a factor in the conversation,” Scoppe said.
