It’s likely that fewer than one voter in 10 knows anything about Warren Jones, the Boise attorney selected by Idaho Gov. Butch Otter for the state Supreme Court this week – other than the quirky fact that he won’t be the only justice named Jones.

Yet, Otter contends that fellow Idahoans will support his choice of Jones – Warren, not current Justice Jim Jones – once they get to know him. After introducing Jones in Coeur d’Alene on Tuesday, Otter said: “I have every confidence that if the electorate studies Warren Jones as I have, they will see it’s a wise choice the Judicial Council made.”

And there’s the rub.

There’s no way for the electorate to decide if the Judicial Council made a “wise choice” until 2008 when Jones will run as an incumbent, probably unopposed. In a maneuver that allows insiders on the Judicial Council and in Idaho bar circles to choose their replacements, with Otter’s blessing, Justices Gerald Schroeder and Linda Copple Trout are retiring early this year. As many justices before them, Schroeder and Trout are doing so because they don’t enjoy contested campaigns and don’t want to take the chance voters may elect someone they don’t like.

Trout, who survived a bruising 2002 re-election campaign against Coeur d’Alene attorney Starr Kelso, said as much to Betsy Russell of The Spokesman-Review in May after announcing her decision to retire.

“It removes a level of partisanship,” said Trout, who chaired the Judicial Council for nearly eight years during her tenure as chief justice. “My experience is partisanship has no play in the decision they make of those two to four names that go to the governor. And I think that’s the way it should be – judges as nonpartisan.”

In other words, Trout, Schroeder and other early Supreme Court retirees are contemptuous of the Idaho Constitution that puts the election of justices in the hands of voters. Rather than tackle the problem head-on and lobby the Legislature and voters for a change in the state Constitution – a dicey prospect at best – they have joined forces with the governor to unofficially disenfranchise voters.

Like about two-thirds of the justices, Trout and Schroeder were appointed to the high court by governors. Trout, who will be replaced by appointment later this year, served 15 years on the court. She was routinely re-elected until 2002 when she was attacked as liberal by a barrage of television ads sponsored by Idahoans for Tax Reform.

Two years earlier, Dan Eismann attracted 58.6 percent of the vote to unseat Justice Cathy Silak in a race in which Eismann was criticized for campaigning unfairly because he appeared at partisan events. It’s questionable if Eismann would be a justice today if he had to wait in line with 18 other supplicants for the blessing of the Judicial Council, as Warren Jones did.

Eismann, the people’s choice, has distinguished himself, as was clear Thursday when he was selected to replace Schroeder as chief justice.