Charles H. McKenzie entered the Jackson County prosecutor’s office after receiving his law degree at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. From 1993 his principal work was civil litigation in private practice. The Sixteenth Circuit dates his appointment by Governor Jay Nixon to July 2011 and identifies the method as Missouri’s Nonpartisan Court Plan.
How to trace the appointment
Sixteenth Circuit · Charles McKenzie’s appointmentJackson County Circuit Court · judicial selectionThe appointment is a political fact
The circuit describes a selection process in which a commission interviews applicants and presents three names to the governor. That institutional history belongs beside a lawyer’s résumé. Appointment is a decision made under a public system. The reader need not guess a judge’s politics to investigate how the seat is filled.
A civic reading
I write about public institutions because their history survives in records that a citizen can read. The same freedom that lets a lawyer defend an argument lets a publisher examine how a government office works. McKenzie’s transition from civil trial practice to Division 13 is a specific local instance worth documenting.