Kansas Judges, Accountability, And The Ballot

The WallBuilders Show

Tim Barton, David Barton & Rick Green

Wallbuilders Show, Education, Constitutional, Church, Christianity, History, Conservative, America, Family, Christian, Biblical, Religion & Spirituality, Wallbuilders.show, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2026

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What happens when a small circle of lawyers controls who sits on a state’s highest court? We unpack Kansas’s bar-driven judicial selection and make the case for restoring voter accountability to the bench. You’ll hear why retention elections rarely inform the public, how judicial review morphed into judicial supremacy in modern practice, and what history suggests about balancing independence with democratic oversight. We share examples from states that shifted back to elections and saw credib...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the Wall Builders Show on a Thursday. So we're doing foundations of Freedom Thursday, which means if you're listening, you get to drive the conversation. Send your emails into us. Radio at wallboulders.com. Radio at wallbuilders.com. Any question you got about the founders, about the founding documents, about legislation
0:24.6	being considered right now, the principles, you name it.
0:27.3	You get to ask any questions about the foundations.
0:30.7	And we will try to get to as many of those as we possibly can.
0:33.5	I'm Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton.
0:35.6	And our first question is coming from Marie.
0:38.0	It has to do with Kansas and the judges there and how they're chosen. Here we go, guys.
0:43.5	She said Kansas is the only state in the country with a, quote, bar-controlled method of judicial
0:48.5	selection. A committee of lawyers selects the state's Supreme Court justices. There's a ballot
0:52.9	initiative this August to change it back to a
0:54.7	direct election of Supreme Court judges. I would think that a direct election would be the most
0:58.6	democratic way to select judges, but opponents of the measure are already positioned in an election
1:02.8	to mean the judicial candidates will be bought. I would love to hear your opinion on this measure
1:08.1	and get your help in understanding why it changed to selection
1:11.8	by committee back in 1958. Thank you all for all you're doing to educate and inform. God bless
1:16.9	y'all. Okay, man, Marie, thank you. Great question. And guys, if I understand it right, it's a little
1:22.3	bit different all over the country. There's some that are elected, some that are appointed by the governor, and then sometimes
1:29.1	it's a committee that maybe gives the governor's names.
1:31.6	I didn't realize in Kansas, the committee quite literally selects them.
1:35.7	I'm assuming there's got to be a, is there not a gubernatorial involvement in Kansas?
1:41.1	No, and what you're talking about, as she mentioned, Missouri plan, but there's also
1:45.6	the modified Missouri plan. There's also the Missouri Tennessee plan. There's a modified
	...

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