Members of the Connecticut Law Tribune Editorial Board are broadly supportive of Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Andrew McDonald to be the next chief justice of the court, and the group offers three opinion pieces this week to voice its approval and wishes that the Connecticut Legislature will agree with its reasoning.

Two of the editorials are signed by the full editorial board and one is written by board member Wesley Horton of Hartford's Horton, Dowd, Bartschi & Levesque. Each piece, in its own way, reaches out to Connecticut lawmakers to look at McDonald's recent decisions as an associate justice, his overwhelming confirmation to join the court in 2013 and his previous history as a well-liked legislator and litigation partner at Pullman & Comley.

Despite that record, a nearly party-line 20-20 vote on McDonald's nomination in the Legislature's Judiciary Committee on Feb. 26 resulted in a surprise “unfavorable” recommendation from the committee, signifying to many that the nation's bitterly divisive rhetoric has infected political discourse in the Nutmeg State.

The Connecticut Law Tribune's trio of calls for confirmation, and supporting arguments, are as follows: