Lawrence Journal-World opinion section

Opening up the process for appointing members to the Kansas Supreme Court and the Kansas Court of Appeals may address many of the concerns that have led critics to call for a constitutional overhaul of that system.

A bill that has been forwarded to Gov. Sam Brownback would make the Kansas Supreme Court Nominating Commission subject to the state’s open records and meetings laws. It also would require the governor to release the names of people seeking seats on the Court of Appeals.

The governor appoints members of both courts, but the process for the two now is different. The nominating commission reviews nominations for the Supreme Court and forwards three names to the governor, who must choose one of the three. Until 2013, the same process was followed for the Court of Appeals, but the governor now fills seats on that court with the consent of the Kansas Senate but without any input from the nominating commission.

The law on the governor’s desk would open up both of those processes by allowing the public to assess the nominees and perhaps gain some insight into the selection process. It would expressly alter the governor’s policy of withholding the names of Court of Appeals applicants, as he did when making appointments to that court in 2013 and 2015. In both cases, he announced only his final selections for the seats.

The Supreme Court Nominating Commission has nine members — five attorneys elected by Kansas attorneys and four non-attorneys appointed by the governor. The chief justice of the Supreme Court currently appoints replacements for attorneys on the commission who don’t complete their terms, and a provision that would have given that duty to the governor was wisely removed from the bill before it was passed.

The bill still would require a list of lawyers eligible to participate in the election of commission members to be filed with the secretary of state, who, with the attorney general, would be responsible for counting the ballots. That new oversight has prompted some concern about preserving the separation of powers in the state, but the positive aspects of this bill seem to outweigh the negative ones.

Critics of the nominating commission have focused on the body’s attorney majority, but allowing the public more access to the commission’s deliberations may allow them to see that the system works fine and without any sinister motives. The same principle applies to the governor’s appointments to the Court of Appeals.

The public should be able to monitor and assess the judicial nomination process, and this legislation is a good step toward providing that oversight.