Amendment would clarify who gets to appoint jurists.

On Inauguration Day, in January 2019, which governor has the power to fill the seats of three retiring justices: the one leaving office or the new one coming into power?

Because we do not yet know who will be elected governor in November, Sen. Tom Lee, R-Brandon, says now is "the purest time for us to think about good governance and not politics."

On March 11, at the Senate Judiciary Committee he chairs, Lee successfully advanced a proposed constitutional amendment to give the outgoing governor clear authority to prospectively fill judicial vacancies on Inauguration Day. SJR 1188 passed with a 5-3 vote, and its next stop was the Senate Rules Committee on March 20, where it was approved on a party-line vote of 10-5. It was headed to the full Senate on March 26, after this News went to press, and the bill does not have a House counterpart.

Lee said he wants to keep the debate in the abstract, but the concrete facts are that Florida Supreme Court Justices Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente, and Peggy Quince will all turn 70, the mandatory retirement age, during the next governor's term. Their six-year terms will all end on the same day a governor is sworn in on Inauguration Day, January 8, 2019.

Political pundits have noted that who wins the election in November may determine when the justices actually decide to retire. Depending on the justices' feelings about the victorious governor's judicial philosophies, the justices could retire early and give the incumbent governor clear authority to appoint their successor, or wait until the end of the next governor's term, leaving it to a successor governor to fill their seats.

While the Supreme Court gave an advisory opinion in 2006 when a vacancy occurs--the term expires on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in January, the same date as the governor's inauguration--the court has not addressed who is entitled to make the subsequent appointment.

"There's a hole in the constitution right now that if we don't fix it, we could be headed for a boatload of litigation under a constitutional crisis, with a Supreme Court that has a cloud cast over every decision in the interim," said Lee, who "concluded that it is the governor who begins the judicial nominating process who should be authorized to make the appointment."

But three Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee--Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa; Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Margate; and Sen. Darren Soto, D-Kissimmee--were not ready to draw that...