Supreme Court reaches down
The Tennessee Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will hear the case that would review the Knox County Charter without going through the normal appeals process. That sounds wonderful, except that the Court will not hear the case until September 6th-well after the August 3rd local election.Here's a prediction: The Court will not overturn Chancellor Weaver's ruling, partly because Weaver was legally right in his opinion, but more likely because of the immediate chaos it would create in Knox County Government if the ruling were overturned. Since the Court will not hear the case until after the election, the electoral fate of all of the term-limited commissioners will have been decided, and if they are ruled ineligable, how would they be immediately replaced?
If the Court does overturn Chancellor Weaver's ruling, I think they will also issue an order that allows the term-limited Commissioners to serve out one final term in order to avert yet another constitutional crisis.
posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 7:24 AM
3 Comments:
While having very little first-hand knowledge of the political climate of your fair state, I think your prediction will turn out correct because as you correctly point out, appeals courts generally like to avoid chaos (or what might cause chaos) if at all possible.
David,
There are two points on which I disagree with you. First, I beleive that Judge Weaver will be overturned and, two, the TSC will not issue any orders allowing any re-elected term-limited office holders to remain in office. The law already allows for removal and replacement of disqualified officials. In the case of the county commission the remaining commissioners will choose the replacement(s). No need for any special rulings on that. They get re-elected on Aug 3 and then they will step down (if the TSC rules in favor of the Charter) and the commission votes on replacements. There was a fairly recent article in the KNS that addressed this very question.
Stevemule
I think we have yet to see just what will happen if the Court overturns Weaver's ruling-since all of this is uncharted territory, I think it is all conjecture.
We'll just have to disagree on where the Court will come down until the ruling is issued.
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