Next week’s interviews for people seeking a seat on the Kansas Supreme Court are a great contribution to government transparency.

For the first time, the Supreme Court Nominating Commission will open its interviews to the public. On Monday and Tuesday, the commission will interview 14 attorneys and judges who have applied to fill the vacancy of Justice Nancy Moritz, who has left the court to take a seat on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A schedule of interviews, as well as biographical information on each of the applicants is available on the Supreme Court’s website (www.kscourts.org).

The interviews will be conducted in the Fatzer Courtroom in the Kansas Judicial Center in Topeka, and will be open to the public. After the interviews, the nominating commission will choose three nominees to forward to the governor, who will appoint one of the three to the vacant seat. Written comments from the public also were accepted through July 28.

The nominating commission adopted guidelines for open interviews in January 2011, and this is the first time those guidelines have been used in a Supreme Court selection. According to court officials, open interviews were part of the selection process for three members of the Kansas Court of Appeals before the appointment process for that court was changed on July 1, 2013. Appeals courts judges now are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Kansas Senate without any input from the nominating commission — or the public.

The public interview process goes a long way toward addressing criticism that the current merit selection for appointing members of the state’s highest court is undemocratic because five of the nominating commission’s nine members are attorneys chosen by other attorneys from across the state. Critics contend that the new system for appointing appeals court judges is more democratic because it involves confirmation by the elected members of the Senate. However, in making his only appointment to the Court of Appeals under the new law, Gov. Brownback declined to release the names or seek any public input about the people who had applied for the open position. His appointee won easy approval from a Senate majority that shared the governor’s political philosophy.

Public interviews, along with public votes on whether to retain justices on the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, offer Kansans good opportunities to observe, evaluate and, if needed, reject judges who don’t measure up. The transparent process for interviewing applicants for the Supreme Court further supports the merit selection of judges over the closed, more political system now in place for the Court of Appeals.