Kansas has enacted a law that would strip the state courts of their funding if that state's Supreme Court rules against a separate law that removed some of its powers, The New York Times' John Eligon reports.
Gov. Sam Brownback signed a courts budget tying funding to a law that took the authority to appoint district court judges from the Supreme Court to the district courts themselves. The measure was promoted by the Kansas Legislature's conservatives.
Richard E. Levy, a constitutional law professor at the University of Kansas, told Eligon the measures in the judiciary budget bill would be like Congress "passing a law outlawing abortion and then telling the judicial branch that it will lose its funding if it finds the law unconstitutional."
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
