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Show The Enterprise Review , December 29 . 1976 Page 15b G Utah Shuns Excellence by Parker M. Nielson U The Conference in Geneva; visiting Scholar at the United Nations, 1970-7- 1 . On the basis of merit, he simply could not be ignored. A man of his credentials would be a unique asset to the state. I do not mean to disparage the three nominees who were certified by the Commission to Governor-elec- t Matheson. Judges Gould and Hall, and Provo attorney Christensen, are all well qualified in their own right. It is no discredit to the three nominees certified, or the existing members of the Court, to say that Prof. Firmage would have brought a level of scholarship to the Court of which it has not been beneficiary for many years. What is objectionable, however, is that Prof. Firmage was passed over for no reason which will square with the facts other than that in 1975 he had the courage to take the Utah Supreme Court to task, in a published article in a scholarly journal, for disregarding the Utah Supreme Court has been deprived of intellectual and moral leadership, writing skill and overall excellence. At issue is the action of the Judicial Nominating Commission, headed by Justice F. Henri Henroid, in passing over the candidacy of Professor Edwin B. Firmage of the Utah College of Law for a seat on the Utah Supreme Court. In doing so, the Commission appears to have violated the spirit of the Merit Selection Act adopted by the Legislature in E S T 1967. Prior to that year, judicial appointments were made at the discretion of the Governor and frequently made for purely political reasons. The purpose of the Merit Selection Act was to remove politics from judicial appointments and assure that the Governor, while not deprived entirely of his discretion, would at least be required to make his selection from a list of the three most qualified candidates as certified by the Commission. Sadly, we now appear to be returning to the former practices, but this time with a Commission not selected by the voters exercising arbitrary political judgement. Professor Firmage s qualifications are legion and impressive: He graduated in the top 1 of his class at BYU with B.S. and M.S. degrees; the holder of J.D., L.L.M. and S.J.D. degrees from the University of Chicago Law School; a member of the Board of Editors of the University of Chicago Law Review; White House Fellow in 1965-6- 6 and assistant to Vice President Humphrey; named outstanding young man of the year in 1966 by the Utah J.C.s; International Affairs Fellow to the Counsel of Foreign Relations at the SALT C 0 L U M N I AM W fe ksc. MM i p &RS I &IRT Constitution of the United States and stating that the Utah Court had defied or demonstrated ignorance of over half a century of United States Supreme Court case law. It is not my thesis that Firmage was entitled to the nomination. There may, indeed, be reasons to pass over the professor for one of the other candidates, and the Commission evidently saw such reasons. That, however, is not the prerogative of the Commission, and its usurping of that prerogative is not within the spirit of the Merit Selection Act. It simply does not square with reality to say that Prof. Firmage, on the basis of ability, tempermament, training and which the Merit Selection Act sets out as the experience criterion was not among the group whose names should be certified to the Governor. Thereafter, if discretion is to be exercised on other grounds that is a choice which appears to be reposed in the Governor rather than the Commission. A TER&FC WQ&SePRM vve MvvuT&sr. avjp ime HAV'C FDR o bg AFRICA- - rx HANP- - (2 m V6RV W7E5T IU W MHO AM5RGM0 ff6HoUSv toPA fl-V- SMKBf? tiXU ACABE S ID IVY Rltt-O- F RV1CH lOASue tX) OP X not WHAT VO W00JM6 TA, JIHUWP WOO R &FV-- y VXTCHu Kilt &tt w jt m Pragmatic Dogmatics Could Reagan Have Won? by Kent Shearer In the wake of Gerald Fords razor-thi- n Presidential loss to Jimmy Carter, it is only natural that those who interest themselves in politics inquire whether Ronald Reagan whose GOP National Convention challenge to the unelected incumbency of Ford would have won fell but 117 votes short had the Californian been the nominee? Writing in the December 24 National Review , published under Buckley auspices, respected syndicated columnist Robert Novak says Reagan bore, for the press, the figurative mark of Cain. Judges Novak: Thus, the question I have been asked Would repeatedly since November 2: I doubt it. Reagan have defeated Carter? Reagan surely would have appealed more workers, than Ford to some blue-collespecially in Texas and the South. But he would have been branded, ineradicably extremist. though unjustly, as a right-win- g nomination Moreover, his campaign for the was impeded by periodic candidate blunders that presumably would have been repeated in the fall campaign. In its November issue, on the other hand. Battle Line. the publication of the ar American Conservative Union, takes another line. It publishes an Election Results on a Analysis which concludes that e basis Reagan and conservatism wrould have won. The Line lists as state-by-stat- essentially conservative states: Republican California, Washington, Arizona, Idaho, South Dakota, Indiana, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Montana, Nevada, Virginia, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming. It further counts as entites of the states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Kansas, North Dakota, Oregon, Alaska and (would you believe it?) Mississippi. It is from this background that I express my own present and tentative conclusions. They are: arch-Republic- an (1) Objectively, the American Conservative Union may mislead. Of its essen- tially conservative Republican states, 61 House members are Democratic; only 38 are 4 Republican. The Senate figures are against (Harry F. Byrd, Jr. is elected as an to Republican chagrin Independent and votes with Democrats) on Senate organization. ACUs additional Republican states are 14-- 9 Democratic in the House, 6 Democratic in the Senate. 13-1- 8-- (2) Novak is overly negative. Had there been televised debates over the heads of media the commentators (although their bias in the form of analysis surely would have played a part) there is every reason to believe, Reagan would have decked Carter, and decked him badly indeed. Reagan did so to Bobby Kennedy before a collegiate audience on, of all things, American Vietnam involvement at the height of public rage against a limited Johnsonian in Southcommitment to east Asia. (3) Novak probably is correct in his additional assessment that Fords campaign did not properly split organized labors support for Carter in that Ford and the GOP could not other than feel that the real threat to. . .(the) nation comes not from Leonid Brezhnev but from George Meany. In particular, Novak opines, that (Republican) surviving fraction in the House of Representative is emotionally more antilabor than Despite his disclaimers, Robert Novak seems to me to count numbers better than does the American Conservative Union. And number counting is, for better or worse, what elections are about. non-communi- anti-Commini- st. |