Under the Alaska Constitution, the Alaska Judicial Council makes recommendations before the public vote on retention of judges. This is a good process, meant to reduce political influence on the judges and ensure judicial integrity.
It is important that the Judicial Council consider its recommendation based on the judge’s overall record, rather than injecting its members’ own personal politics into the process.
However, two political appointees of Gov. Mike Dunleavy tried to hijack this process by voting not to retain Judge Adolf Zeman because of their personal biased political beliefs in one recent ruling. Judge Zeman followed the law and the Alaska Constitution in his ruling confirming public funds are not to be spent on private schools.
But one of the Judicial Council members, Denny DeWitt, claimed, “There’s a whole broad area of folks, Alaskans, who were disenfranchised and traumatized to a point by Judge Zeman’s decision.”
What? People lost their right to vote and were traumatized by a judge following the Alaska Constitution? I don’t think so.
It turns out that it has been the practice for public monies to unlawfully be spent on correspondence programs and private schools. I suppose the parents and students who personally financially benefited from receiving public monies to use to pay tuition for private parochial schools (such as the attorney general ) might become upset if the Constitution was actually followed so they could no longer get to claim $4,500 for each student. But that’s not being disenfranchised nor traumatized.
As Jonathan Katcher, an appointee of the Alaska Bar Association, was quoted: “He was very concerned that the council would base a recommendation on a single verdict, rather than the judge’s overall record. Further the council has never taken a position on retention of a Judge based on his or her decisions. And for us to start doing this now, especially on an issue of this emotional intensity is — I just think it’s a dangerous precedent.” I certainly agree with Mr. Katcher.
The two political appointees on the Judicial Council apparently do not care about the Alaska Constitution or judicial integrity so are not qualified to serve on this Council.
— Joanne Kell
Anchorage
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