TALK 94.5 Liz And Nick
TALK 94.5 Liz And Nick
SC POLICY COUNCIL’s RICK BRUNDRETT (TheNerve.org) 4/28/26
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25 starts on Stark.org. So South Carolina Supreme Court states. I want you to explain what that means and what are the ramifications of this. And is it rescheduled and give us the updates, sir?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh, you know, why is this so important? Well, uh obviously our our state Supreme Court is the top court in South Carolina. And normally, refilling seats uh on the top court um uh I would say generally is uh um it's not controversial per se. Um this year, however, not so much. So uh why? Because a sitting Supreme Court justice was actually challenged, you know, uh for re-election to another 10-year terms, unlike uh on our Supreme Court, unlike the U.S. Supreme Court serves for life terms, and our state Supreme Court serves for 10-year terms, which is the longest of any of any court in the state. So um it's a big deal, and they get paid pretty well by taxpayers. Associate justices get 233,000 something a year, and um the chief justice gets uh a little more than 245,000 a year. So they're six-figure uh position. So what happened? Well, there was an election in the legislature, and uh just to remind your listeners, South Carolina and Virginia are the only two states in the nation in the legislature.
SPEAKER_03Rick, what was that second state? South Carolina and Virginia.
SPEAKER_00Virginia, okay are the only two states in the nation where their legislatures play primary roles in electing judges. You're not finding so we're not we're uh pretty unique uh in the country. And so basically uh the legislature uh controls judicial elections in this state. That's the bottom line. So we had an uh election scheduled in the legislature in a joint session, uh I think it was March the fourth, and the day before Justice Fugh dropped out, said, Hey, I've done my vote counting among lawmakers, and I there's no way I'm gonna, you know, get elected, so I'm just dropping out. Okay. There were three other candidates, one of whom was the former longtime House Speaker named Jay Lucas, and the other two were uh Tripp Anderson, uh he's the longtime chief judge at the administrative law court, and Blake Hewitt, who's been on the state court of appeals at the second highest court in the state for a good seven years. Okay. So, all right, so what happens when uh, you know, when an incumbent judge drops out? Well, that doesn't happen very often in this state, uh, and I had to look it up, but uh state law says uh uh requires that when that happens, the whole process has to start all over. Okay, so when are we gonna have this election? Well, at the time I wrote the article at the end of March, they hadn't decided. Yesterday I contacted the Judicial Merit Selection Um Commission. That's the body that screens uh judges, nominates judges for election uh in the legislature. And uh I was informed, well, no decision's been made at this time. So uh the legislature regular session is scheduled to end uh in the middle of next month. So that doesn't really leave it doesn't appear to leave enough time to get an election out before then. So if that's the case, uh I would think that Few Seat wouldn't be screened again by the uh Judicial Merit Selection Commission until this upcoming fall with an election next year, next March. Okay. Now, could the legislature come back in a special session and do something different? Possibly, okay. Few seat, his term expires on July 31st this year. He has said publicly that, and he's told me this as well, that he will serve through the end of his term. Now, and this is the other interesting thing. The law allows members of the Supreme Court, uh Court of Appeals, uh, and certain other uh judgeships, if his family court judges, uh masters in equity, magistrates, to serve beyond their terms if it's expired and no one's uh uh been appointed or elected to fill their seat. It's called that that period is called holdover status. Uh and I've never written anything before about Supreme Court justices and holdover status.
SPEAKER_03So you don't think that's been used before then?
SPEAKER_00Well, that's a good question. I don't know. Historically, I it's uh I don't recall it. I've written a lot about county magistrates, which I'll talk about in a minute. Um they've been held in holdover status. That's been quite routine for many years, okay. Uh so the question is, will few serve beyond his term? He can. Uh now he's he told me back in March that he had not made any decision about that. He said publicly that he had planned to go back, you know, to go into private practice. Um, but I I have not heard from him since then whether he's going to continue to surf past his term.
SPEAKER_03So that potentially leaves us with running one short for a while if he chooses not to well I think um I think the chief justice could appoint like uh an interim uh kind of uh an interim justice, an acting justice from a lower court to kind of fill and that's that has been done in the past when say a justice, you know, has a some type of time, you know, conflict um or or something, and and you just have to have another justice kind of fill in for that particular decision.
SPEAKER_00So I I think I think the court could handle that. The question is, you know, you know, will Justice Hugh serve beyond his term until next year when someone else is elected. Uh now the controversy is should someone like Jay Lucas, an ex you know, House Speaker, get on the high court. I mean, his whole judicial experience, he served a very short stint as a Hartsville city judge way back in the you know uh 1990s. So he has basically no significant judicial experience. And this has been historically a problem, you know, with our state's top court. I wrote I did look at the the modern history of the court that uh the kind of the modern period started like in 1973, and I I did a study and showed that 16 of the 23 justices were former lawmakers, you know, over that time period. Um and so it's been kind of a revolving door that, well, you know, it's been just assumed if you if you're a lawyer and you're in the legislature and you want to be a judge, you might not only can be a lower-level judge, you might even get on to the you know, on the Supreme Court. Uh now, interestingly, for the first time in this 50-some year history, okay, our state Supreme Court is free of ex-lawmakers. Whether that will remain, you know, rema you know, remain that way, I don't know. I don't know if Lucas is going to reapply for the seat or not. He won't, you know, he hasn't responded to my to my inquiries on that.
SPEAKER_03All right, a quick little I'll insert this. Is there anything pending uh you know as far as decisions that are kind of high profile? Could that be a reason why or not really?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean I uh there I think we have, for example, um one case that comes to mind is uh is another um challenge to the um um scholarship, you know, for you know, um using public money. The you know public monies for for private education. I think there's a there's a pending challenge before the Supreme Court, you know, um on on that. But I don't know if that if that would really be affected, you know, with this or or not. Um if you know it's a good question. I'm not I'm not sure maybe few is you know would still be would still be part, you know, uh part of that part of that case. I think the other thing too that that needs that your listeners should should be aware of is that there have been still judicial reform proposals in the legislature. Um I don't think they're gonna get out of the legislature this year, but you know uh one would deal with the Judicial Merit Selection Commission uh right now, and this is a change that just took effect last year. The governor gets to appoint four out of the twelve members. You know, it's not clearly just the left, you know, the House and Senate appointing all the members as in years past. The governor got four. Um they increased the membership from ten to twelve, and the governor gets four, and the other eight are split between the house and senate, okay. Well, under one proposed bill, the governor would get would get to appoint all 12 members.
SPEAKER_03So they would abolish it completely then.
SPEAKER_00Yes, wouldn't it would, you know, would not allow would not allow you at least for the screening, okay, uh the House or Senate to appoint any members. The the governor would point all would appoint all 12 of them, okay. And on top of that, uh any sitting lawmakers, you know, uh would be banned from sitting on the screening committee. Right now, we've got six out of the twelve, you know, uh members of the Judicial Marriage Selection Commission uh are sitting lawmakers. So it it would be pretty significant. And there there would be uh, you know, one version of that bill I saw, and I think it's still in the present bill, there'd be no caps on uh, you know, on qualified candidates. Right now it's six per seat. It was increased effective last year from three to six, but this bill would eliminate it altogether. Meaning if the Judicial Merit Election Commission qualified you as a judicial candidate for every seat, your automatically name would be forwarded to the legislature, you know, for for an election. So uh the problem with that bill is that it got out of the house, okay, was passed in the house, but it's been stuck in Senate Judiciary, and that's chaired um by Senator Rankin um from your area. So um and the other bill, reform bill, would it deals with county magistrates? And the most significant part of that bill is for the first time it would require that those magistrates be screened by Judicial Merit Selection Commission instead of being essentially controlled by the Dell Senate delegations from that county. They have a lot of control over who actually becomes the magistrate, and that's really important because if you're gonna have appear in the court system in South Carolina, most people they're not gonna be at the circuit court level or above, they're gonna be either at the county magistrate level or a local municipal judge.
SPEAKER_03Right, right. Okay, before we run out of time, did you have any other updates you wanted to get to?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I just wanted to say that that bill, you know, is still just it appears just stuck in the house. I don't think it doesn't appear that it's gonna get out of the house. It was debated and then sent back to committee. So we may have to wait till uh next year for these reform bills, you know, to um to be um to come back up again and you know, and and maybe something gets um passed. But our the nurse um parent organization is the South Carolina Policy Council, and they propose a constitutional change which would allow the governor to appoint all judges with Senate confirmation that's similar to the federal model.
SPEAKER_03So I kind of think that that's the model that we should go with, but that's not up to me.
SPEAKER_00No, it'd ultimately be up to you know the uh would up, you know, ultimately be up to the voters. So, you know, what but that but that's what the the policy council ultimately has recommended is going more to a federal model of how judges are selected in the state.
SPEAKER_03Okay, Rick Run that if anyone wanted to read that and any of the other articles, best way to do that is how, sir.
SPEAKER_00Just go to thenerve.org. So it's all it's all right there, and you can look it up at the homepage. We've got categories of topics that you can look at as well.
SPEAKER_03All right, very good. Rick, thank you so much for your time again today and doing all the hard work. We'll talk to you next time.
SPEAKER_00All right, thanks, Nick.