Bar Buzz: A supremely decent move

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There was something striking about last week’s announcement from Minnesota Supreme Court Associate Justice Christopher Dietzen that he plans to resign his seat this summer so that Gov. Mark Dayton and the Commission on Judicial Selection can select his replacement.

Dietzen, who hits the court’s mandatory retirement age of 70 next March, could have chosen a different path. Had he wished, he could have run for re-election this November. Or he could have decided not to run and left the selection of his replacement entirely up to the voters.

The latter option would have been easy to justify with the usual high-minded rhetoric about democracy, and the importance of elections and the letting the people have their say. But as a practical matter, it could have also opened the door to a contested, expensive and nasty partisan contest. Instead, Dietzen chose to hew to a longstanding Minnesota tradition and let his successor arrive by way of gubernatorial appointment.

For the reflexive cynics out there, the truly surprising thing was the utter absence of partisan angle-playing.

After all, Dietzen is the current court’s most conservative member and, of course, he is a Republican. He once served as campaign lawyer for former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who later appointed him to the high court. Before he landed on the bench, he was a reliable donor to the party, doling out more than $6,700 to its causes and candidates since 1990. During the Norm Coleman/Al Franken recount, he was identified as the court’s most prolific political donor.

In choosing to let Dayton name his successor, Dietzen did not simply ensure that the DFL governor gets to pick his replacement; he guaranteed that Dayton appointees will now hold a majority on the court.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Dietzen frankly acknowledged that his decision elicited some blowback. “To the people who may question my sanity — and many have, others will continue to — I have to make a decision that I think is the right decision,” he said. “That’s what I did.”

Against the backdrop of the maddening fight over the U.S. Supreme Court and, across the border, the depressing and unseemly race for Wisconsin Supreme Court, one other thing bears noting: Dietzen did a justice to the profession.