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45 Fla. B.J. 1 (1971)

handle is hein.barjournals/florbarj0045 and id is 1 raw text is: BRIEF-I; yours NEWS Judicial Improvement-Where Do We Go From Here? I~ MTNJ IMED~A Ufi the Florida Legislature as House Joint Resolution 1164, called for mandatory nonpartisan election of judges, a merit selection system for filling judicial va- cancies, a three-tier trial court system with option by electorate to abolish the middle tier, and requiring all judges to be members of the Bar except judges of the county courts of record and magis- trates judges where provided for by gen- eral or special law. Although many portions of 1164 were incorporated in the final version of Arti- cle V passed by the 1969 and 1970 legis- latures, it was the Article V recommend- ed by the Florida Constitution Revision Commission that was accepted by the legislature. This version provided for a two-tier trial court system in the large and a three-tier in the smaller counties. So now we are back at zero. Commit- tees of the Bar are wrestling with an acceptable formula to restructure our courts and remove judges from politics with the implementation of a system for the merit selection of judges through nominating commissions and the election of judges on a nonpartisan basis. Will the Bar succeed? It won't fail because it refused to try again after defeat at the hands of the legislature or the electorate. Would you believe the major legislative effort of the 1949 Florida State Bar As- sociation was a bill calling for the merit selection of judgesl MARSHALL R. CASSEDY Executive Director VOL. 45, NO. 1 • JANUARY, 1971 With the demise of Article V at the hands of the electorate this past Novem- ber by a vote of 526,328 to 503,992, ques- tions have been asked whether this amendment was rejected because it did not go far enough or whether it went too far in revising Florida's court system. If editorial comment is any basis for a judgment on this point, it clearly appears that the proposed new judicial article did not go far enough toward streamlin- ing Florida courts and upgrading the method for selecting and retaining judges. The Florida Bar neither support- ed nor opposed the article as passed by the 1969 and 1970 sessions of the Florida Legislature. Several judicial groups including the Circuit Judges Conference are hard at work preparing a new Article V which the conference believes will be more ac- ceptable both to the Florida Legislature and to the electorate. Last month the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, chaired by Sandy D'Alemberte, held hearings on a new article in Tallahassee where many seg- ments of the bench and bar were heard. There is a determination within the legis- lature to reshape our court system both from the administrative standpoint and structurally so that the increasing case- load of the Seventies can be met satisfac- torily. There remains only the question of what form will the new judicial article take. Upon the recommendation of Presi- dent Burton Young, the Bar's Executive Committee in December resolved that the Board of Governors would consider at its January 1971 Tampa meeting the revision of the Article V, which was ap- proved by the Circuit Judges Conference and received favorable consideration by the Board of Governors at its March 1969 meeting at Palm Beach. This article, introduced in the 1969 session of

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