Supreme Court to consider who should appoint three new justices in January 2019.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments November 1 on a challenge to Gov. Rick Scott's claim he has the authority to appoint replacements for three Supreme Court justices scheduled to retire in January 2019.

The League of Women Voters, Florida Common Cause, and three individuals--Pamela Goodman, Deirdre Macnab, and Liza McClenaghan--filed a petition for a writ of quo warranto with the Supreme Court last June. That came after Scott announced at a December 2016 press conference that he intended to appoint the replacements for Justices Barbara Pariente, Fred Lewis, and Peggy Quince, who, under the age limit for judges in the Florida Constitution, must retire when their terms end on January 8.

The issue is Scott, who is term-limited under the constitution, also must give up the governorship on the same day. While Scott claims he has the right to fill the three vacancies, the petitioners argued under the Florida Constitution the new governor gets to pick the new justices.

It's a question that hasn't arisen in 20 years--when Quince was named to the court. That involved the replacement of retiring Justice Ben F. Overton. Then-Gov. Lawton Chiles, who was term limited and whose service ended the same day as Overton's, began the JNC process to choose Overton's replacement, but Gov.-elect Jeb Bush questioned whether he or Chiles should fill the vacancy.

The issue never went to court, as Chiles and Bush agreed to both interview the finalists selected by the Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission, and both agreed that Quince, then a Second District Court of Appeal judge, should get the nod.

(Lewis joined the court at the same time, but he was replacing Justice Gerald Kogan who retired a few days before the end of his term, letting Chiles alone choose his successor.)

In 2014, Florida voters rejected a constitutional amendment placed on the ballot by the Legislature that would have specified that a governor at the end of his or her term would get to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court and district courts of appeal that occurred on the last day of the gubernatorial term.

The petitioners in their filing noted that in 2006 the court issued an advisory opinion on filling a judicial (DCA or Supreme Court) vacancy due to mandatory retirement and found that "vacancies may be filled by the governor only 'upon the expiration of the term of the judge or justice.'"

Since the governor's term expires at the same time as the retiring justices, and the new...