SC legislators shouldn’t get special treatment in our courts | Opinion

Lady Justice is supposed to be the one wearing a blindfold, not the public. In South Carolina, it’s the other way around.

The state legislature seems to think all of us are wearing blindfolds while its version of Lady Justice holds up a wallet.

The legislature — about one third of them lawyers — has set up the state judicial system to their own personal benefit. We see it in action in our county courthouses. But legislators and judges protecting the status quo say that there is nothing to see here and we should blindly move on along.

That’s what I’m getting out of recent hearings before a state ad hoc committee to examine the judicial selection and retention process in South Carolina.

Even complaints lodged by some who know the system best, including solicitors, sheriffs and the state attorney general, are called invalid.

Mind you, ours is a judicial system controlled by one branch of government, the legislature. And it is a system that has given us the nation’s only all-male state Supreme Court and a bench statewide that looks like an old white men’s club.

Here are the two most obvious reasons the system must change:

First, legislators who currently practice law in state courts also get to vote on who will become a circuit court judge in those same courtrooms. That is a blatant conflict of interest, pure and simple, no matter what they say.

Practicing lawyers should never have a vote that makes a judge beholden to them for his or her career.

Beyond that, practicing lawyers sit on a commission that weeds out which judicial candidates will even come to a vote in the legislature.

That too is a giant conflict of interest. It drives work — that is, dollars — to lawyers in the legislature.

South Carolina has set up rules that enable one to use a public trust for personal gain.

And they don’t want change.

In the hearings, those who defend this set-up say it’s not a problem because everyone is behaving and are in fact pure and righteous as a mighty stream.

The problem for them is that we’re not wearing blindfolds. We can see this clearly. The current arrangement tips the scales of justice in a way that is unfair to prosecutors, taints the entire system, and can enrich lawyer/legislators who have way too much sway in the judicial branch.

One often repeated suggestion is that South Carolina elect circuit court judges by popular vote rather than by a vote in the legislature.

The legislature will let that slide as soon as they figure out how they can commandeer most of the dark money that would pour in here for obnoxious ads and opposition research in judicial races.

A second major problem has been raised in the hearings. It’s the gift that keeps on giving, this one handed to lawyer/legislators by the state Supreme Court. Legislators practicing law get an automatic exemption from appearing in court for seven months of each year.

As they all know, delayed justice is more likely to lead to no justice at all.

And it’s another reason for clients to come rushing with wallets wide open to attorneys who have at least one big fat thumb on the scales of justice.

It is on the face of it a conflict of interest.

What needs to be protected here are not legislators, but the public trust in the judicial system.

It’s bad enough when only the wealthy can afford lawyers who can game the system ad nauseum, as we see the disgraced convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh doing.

It’s even worse when we condone so many unfair advantages in an arena where all God’s people are supposed to be treated equally.