HELENA - Jeff Renz of Clinton, a University of Montana law professor, and John Warren, a veteran attorney in private practice in Dillon, are seeking appointment to the future justice opening on the Montana Supreme Court.

They are among 11 lawyers who have applied to the Judicial Nomination Commission for the seat that Justice John Warner, who is resigning, will vacate Dec. 31.

The Judicial Nomination Commission will review the applications, interview the attorneys and narrow the field from three to five finalists. Gov. Brian Schweitzer will choose from the finalists.

Renz, who's lived in Montana 42 years, received a bachelor's degree in botany in 1971 and a law degree in 1979, both from the University of Montana. He has practiced law since 1979, all in Montana except for a short stint as a law clerk and associate for an Illinois law firm. In 2000, Renz was an unsuccessful candidate for the Montana Supreme Court.

He is a UM law professor and director of the law school's criminal defense clinic.

Asked what events in his career make him most proud, Renz listed several. He was co-director of the Montana Pardon Project, which in 2006 obtained unconditional pardons from Schweitzer for 78 men and women convicted of sedition during World War I. In 1987, he was co-counsel in a case and won the first Voting Rights Act trial on behalf of American Indians, which he said "changed the electoral map and the elected official faces of the West." In 1990, he persuaded federal courts that disabled students have a right to compete in interscholastic supports.

Renz said he applied because his background in biological sciences offers skills and knowledge the court now lacks. "The absence is reflected in the way the court approaches pseudo-science in our courtrooms," he said.

And Renz said he's applying because of his "long and deep" appellate experience, litigating nearly 100 cases in appellate courts.

"I apply because I really like what our courts do, and I want to do what I can to help them do it better," he said.

Asked what might set him apart from other applicants, Renz quoted from this note he received from a former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Anton Scalia: "We've never met, but I hate you anyway. I've just read your article on the General Welfare Clause, and it is brilliant. Substantively and methodologically, it is one of the best articles I have read in recent years. Not only does it render futile any ambitions I might have had to write on the subject, but now I have to go through life knowing that if I had ever written on the subject, I would have done a worse job."

Warren, a Montana resident for 47 years, received a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1970 and a law degree from the UM in 1973.

He's worked for the same law firm in Dillon since 1973 and been a partner since 1975. Warren served as Dillon city attorney from 1982-84.

Warren said he enjoys the challenges, trials and chances to help clients that the law has provided. Serving on the Supreme Court would be intellectually challenging because he enjoys researching cases, reasoning the facts and writing, he said.

He has served on the Montana Commission on Practice, the Montana Supreme Court's disciplinary arm, since 1990 and has been its chairman since 2001.

Warren said he's proud of his work on a contested will where a rancher, whose wife had died years ago, left majority interest in his ranch, worth millions of dollars, to one of his five children and excluded the others. He represented three adult children.

"Emotionally, those three found it an extraordinary 'kick in the gut' to endure a father's inexplicable decision and have it affirmed by both a district court and the Montana Supreme Court," Warren said.

Two of the three he represented "still had enough faith in my judgment to ask me what I could do to challenge the distribution of their mother's QTIP trust." This trust is set up for the surviving spouse to receive income from its assets for life, while its principal usually goes to the children.

Warren said he knew little about QTIP trusts and those who did assured him there was little that could be done. Yet his research found "a variation on a rule of distribution, which the presiding judge followed, meaning my clients received a windfall (of $1 million each)," he said.

"This case illustrates how our system of justice works," Warren said. "The theories of our law may be elegant, but their application in a particular case is often sloppy, influenced by random, sometimes unpredictable factors. Yet for the litigant who persists in a just cause, the system will usually produce an arguably just result. The secret is persistence in giving justice a chance."