U.S. elections for top court?

PROVO — If Chief Justice William Rehnquist retires from the U.S. Supreme Court this year, a Brigham Young University professor might become a go-to guy for national talk shows during confirmation hearings for Rehnquist's replacement.

That's because BYU political scientist Richard Davis has a radical new suggestion for selecting new Supreme Court justices — national elections.

The proposal is part of a new book Davis wrote that hits bookstores today, "Electing Justice — Fixing the Supreme Court Nomination Process."

Davis hatched the idea for the book a dozen years ago in the wake of the stormy Senate confirmation hearings for Robert Bork, who failed to win Senate confirmation, and Clarence Thomas. He attended the hearings for the next — and last — two justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, landing interviews with each of them.

He wanted to write about how the intense media coverage and lobbyists for special interest groups had changed the process into an election campaign without voters, complete with a national debate — the confirmation hearings — but he couldn't find a publisher. While he waited for a vacancy on the court to create renewed interest, he developed the idea for an actual election.

"These interest groups recognized they are affected by what happens in the Supreme Court, but they can't lobby it like they can Congress. But, they can affect personnel changes," he said.

"Now the interest groups, the press, the president and the senators all claim they are making decisions in the name of the public, but we have no say in the process. I'm suggesting we have a say."

His proposal would limit justices to single, 18-year terms. The elections of the nine justices would be staggered so there would be a vacancy every two years.

Former Utah State University president Kermit Hall praised Davis for his research on the nomination process.

"It is, (Davis) demonstrates, more like an electoral campaign than an elite-dominated and closed process developed by the Framers," said Hall, editor of the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. "The result is a landmark book about the modern process of finding high court judges."

Davis said he is prepared for a backlash from conservatives unwilling to entertain a constitutional amendment and from columnists like the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Michael McGough, who found "Electing Justice" both illuminating and exasperating.

"Illuminating," McGough wrote, "because the bulk of the book presents a concise primer of how the confirmation of Supreme Court justices evolved (or devolved) from the elite process intended by the framers to populist free-for-alls.