MinnLawyer Blog

The retirement of Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Eric Magnuson at the end of June gives Gov. Tim Pawlenty his third chance to appoint someone to the state’s top judicial spot and his fifth opportunity to add a new person to the high court.

Some in the legal community speculate the governor will promote one of the sitting justices he previously appointed to the court — G. Barry Anderson, Christopher Dietzen or Lorie Gildea. If Pawlenty goes that way, he’ll still need to replace that person on the court.

It’s unclear at this point whether the governor will form a screening committee to vet candidates for Magnuson’s spot (or the vacancy that will open up if he promotes from within the court). For District Court appointments, the governor is mandated by statute to use the Commission on Judicial Selection to screen applicants, but no so for appellate judges.

According to John Hultquist, director of judicial, board and commission appointments for the governor, no decision has been made on how Pawlenty will go about choosing a successor.

“We’re talking about it, but haven’t formalized how we’ll proceed,” he told Minnesota Lawyer yesterday. “We were caught so much by surprise [by Magnuson’s announcement.”

While Pawlenty has used an ad hoc screening committee to vet candidates and make recommendations for Court of Appeal vacancies, he’s chosen not to use this process for any of his high court appointments. When he promoted Russell Anderson to the top spot in December 2005, the selection process was not conducted publicly. Pawlenty said at the time that 15 to 20 candidates were considered for the job but Anderson was the only candidate to be interviewed. (To fill the seat vacated by Anderson’s promotion, Pawlenty moved Gildea up from the District Court bench. Dietzen was promoted to the high court from the Court of Appeals when Justice Sam Hanson left the bench late in 2007.)

When Anderson retired in 2008, Pawlenty again declined to use a formal vetting committee to find a replacement. In fact, when Magnuson was tapped for the spot, the governor took some heat for appointing someone who was a friend, advisor and former work colleague without even appearing to employ some kind of screening process. Perhaps the governor will want to avoid a repeat of that criticism. Or perhaps not.

It’ll be interesting to see what process, if any, Pawlenty uses this time around. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear something, so stay tuned.