RALEIGH — A bill under consideration in the North Carolina Senate seeks to alter North Carolina’s judicial selection process fundamentally. This bill seeks to silence the voices of the 2 million North Carolina citizens who vote in judicial elections in favor of a commission of political appointees and special interests.

Under the system envisioned by the proponents of Senate Bill 458, a variation on what is commonly known as the Missouri Plan, North Carolina’s judges (other than District Court judges) no longer would be chosen through open and contested elections. Instead, a judicial nominating commission comprised of members selected by politicians and special interest groups would provide the governor with two nominees to fill each vacancy that occurs on the bench. The governor — whether or not the governor believed either nominee was the best candidate for the job — would be bound legally to appoint one of the nominees to the bench.

Under the proposed system, debates over the merits of potential judges would be moved from the public square to private clubs — one of the few remaining places smoke-filled rooms are allowed in North Carolina.

In return for sacrificing their right to select their judges directly, citizens are promised a less-politicized judiciary. However, judicial nominating commissions do not remove politics from the judicial selection process. Rather, they are nothing more than politics by a different and less democratic means.

North Carolina’s prior experiment with judicial nominations and the recent experience of other states bears this out.

As Elon University School of Law Professor Scott Gaylord recently noted, until 1868, North Carolina utilized an appointment system to select judges. However, this system was one of many ill-advised policies abandoned in the aftermath of the Civil War. The decision to place the power of judicial selection directly in the hands of the citizens was made because the appointment system resulted in a politically polarized judiciary.

In addition to our state’s own history, the recent experience in other states demonstrates that the Missouri Plan does not provide the panacea its proponents promise. After implementing a version of the Missouri Plan similar to the plan proposed in this state, Missouri, Kansas, Tennessee, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Arizona all have experienced severe cases of buyer’s remorse and currently are attempting to eliminate their judicial nominating committees.

However, over and above the warning provided by our history and that of other states, the primary reason to reject the Missouri Plan is because it is repugnant to the democratic ideals that are the underpinnings of our system of government. The Missouri Plan does not allow North Carolina’s citizens a voice in the appointment process and gives them no authority over those who decide who will be on the bench.

Under the Missouri Plan, if North Carolina citizens do not like the judges appointed to the courts, they are powerless to effect any change in the appointment process: the governor must choose one of the commission’s nominees, and citizens have no ability to remove commission members. In effect, the citizens and state officials who are elected to represent them abdicate all control over judicial selection to the nominating commission.

Although the judicial branch is distinct from its executive and legislative counterparts in that its duty is to say what the law is, rather than what the law should be, its authority to do so is based upon a grant of power from the citizenry. When the judiciary makes decisions, it is either applying laws enacted by the citizens’ representatives or enforcing the restrictions the citizens have placed on their government through the state and federal constitutions.

Because the judicial branch exercises power granted to it by the people and enforces laws and limitations on government enacted by the people, North Carolina’s citizens — and not political appointees and special interest groups — should determine who will exercise this authority.

Robert Numbers is an attorney at Womble Carlyle in Raleigh and a member of the North Carolina Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights.