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should legislatures be able to strips courts of funding if they don't like how they rule, or to force them to rule a certain way by threatening to withhold funding?
http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/0...rt-funding.htmFour Kansas judges sued the state Friday, challenging the nonseverability provision of a budget bill that defunds the courts because a judge declared the governor's budget attack uncons utional.
A Superior Court judge last week struck as uncons utional a 2-year budget bill Gov. Sam Brownback signed into law last year because it contained a non-severability clause stating that if any Kansas judge struck down the bill the entire state judiciary would be stripped of funding.
Brownback's bill changed the method of selecting chief judges in state courts from appointment by the state supreme court to election by the judges in each judicial district. The Kansas Supreme Court opposed the bill as a violation of the separation of powers, Shawnee County Chief Judge Larry Solomon agreed in his Wednesday, Sept. 2 ruling .
Attorneys sought to stay the ruling Thursday, fearing the ruling would kill funding for the entire Kansas court system.
On Friday, Robert Fairchild, chief judge of the Seventh Judicial District in Douglas County (Lawrence) and three other chief judges sued the state seeking declaratory judgment that the nonseverability clause of the bill is uncons utional and therefore unenforceable. The judges want the rest of Kansas House Bill 2005 left in effect.
Joining Fairchild are Judges Jeffry Lack, Larry Solomon and Meryl Wilson.
The judges are represented by Pedro Irigoneray in Shawnee County Court, Topeka.
Irigoneray said in a statement that Brownback and the Legislature were "putting politics above the people's cons utional right to justice."
"All Kansans seeking justice deserve to have their day in court, but without funding, day-to-day judicial functions would come to a grinding halt. Hopefully, this provision will be deemed uncons utional before that happens."
should legislatures be able to strips courts of funding if they don't like how they rule, or to force them to rule a certain way by threatening to withhold funding?
Kansas has a cons ution that establishes the judicial power, and also a bill of rights that grants the right to a trial by jury (among other rights).
It's very likely that complete defunding of the judiciary is indeed uncons utional. Furthermore, this can end up being pretty expensive for the State. It only takes one Kansan suing the State for the breach of his state cons utional right for the court to potentially demand the State to provide funding, and in the event that they do not, to seize the required assets.
This is exactly how megalomaniac kings ruled. If I don't like you, if you oppose me, I kill you.
Most of these KS legislators are lawyers, but obviously haven't studied even American history, never mind European or world history.
Repug governance yields a hole in .
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/show...=1#post8050208
I said this then and will say it again:
Obviously, if the executive and legislative can effectively tie the funding of the judiciary to obtaining particular results on favored pieces of legislation, the judiciary loses its independence and cannot function as a check on the other branches, which is to say that it cannot perform the very function that it is fundamentally intended to serve. I'm not here to say that Brownback's laws should or should not be upheld; that's an issue for Kansans. If Brownback wants to exert political pressure to get outcomes, I think that's probably okay too, but I don't think that pressure can come in the form of defunding a coequal branch of the government.
Kansas may defund a coequal branch at their own peril. The political blowback might be more than they bargained for, assuming appellate success, which is by no means guaranteed. It's a bad idea.
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