President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have worked together to install a wave of new far-right ideologues in the federal courts. But at the state level, Republican officials are working just as hard to take over the judiciary, and nowhere is that truer than Arizona.
On Wednesday, Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) announced that he would be nominating Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery to the Arizona Supreme Court seat left by retiring Chief Justice Scott Bales — a deeply controversial decision, given that Montgomery is an extreme right-winger plagued by scandal.
Montgomery has fiercely supported the death penalty and the drug war, told a Vietnam veteran he was "the enemy" for using medical marijuana, improperly refused to provide free legal counsel to same-sex couples looking to adopt. He worked to shield a deputy attorney in his office accused of serial sexual harassment. And a former judicial nominating commission rejected him 7-5, saying that he was unqualified to serve as a judge due to lack of experience, ideological bias, and ethics scandals.
Ducey, however, has gone to great lengths to roll back state oversight of the judicial nominating process so that he could appoint Montgomery anyway, as noted by Slate's Mark Joseph Stern. He packed the state Supreme Court, adding two extra seats to it, and replaced all the Democrats on the nominating commission with Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, breaking the precedent of past governors who chose a bipartisan slate of experts.
The consequences could be devastating for the rule of law in Arizona.
