Court Opinion

ID: 9675210
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:45:07.032446+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:32.371408
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge
(dissenting).
In addition to concurring in Judge HENLEY’s dissent, I wish to point out that as I understand the reasoning of the majority opinion, it goes like this: since section 30 says that all non-partisan court judges are to retire at age 70, the intent of the voters was to treat all non-partisan court judges alike. But since circuit court judges who come under the plan later are to hold office for the term to which they would have been entitled had the plan not been adopted in their circuit (this is Sec. 29(c) (1) and is a true grandfather clause) and since the change of nomenclature to judge of the court of appeals is not to work a wholesale removal from office of those who used to be known as judges of the St. Louis, Kansas City, or Springfield Court of Appeals (this is found in paragraph 3 of Sec. 31, the schedule, and in my opinion, is not a grandfather clause at all, but operates only to make it plain that those who were judges of the St. Louis, Kansas City and Springfield Courts of Appeal are to become the judges of the court of appeals in their respective districts), it follows there must also be a grandfather clause for every level of non-partisan court judge — circuit court, probate, appellate and supreme court — because, to quote the opinion, “To rule otherwise would be to destroy or at least ignore those words of Section 30 which declare that the provisions thereof apply to ‘[a]ll judges,’ and are obviously indicative of an interest that ‘all’ of those serving within the non-partisan court plan were to be treated alike.” Therefore, even though there is no grandfather clause applying to judges in relator’s class, relator can nevertheless continue to serve.
This is like saying that if there is a general rule applying to all classes making up an aggregate, but it has one exception, *403then to achieve uniformity, there must be as many exceptions as there are classes, or to put it another way, if there is an exception as to one, there must be an exception for all. I do not believe the people had any such intention.