TRENTON

-- Senate President Steve Sweeney picked up his phone Monday morning and listened as Gov. Chris Christie dropped a political bomb onto this lap.

Supreme Court Justice John Wallace, a close ally of Sweeney, had to go. The governor was removing him, the first time a sitting justice has been removed from the bench since the Constitution was drafted after World War II.

Sweeney was shocked. Wallace is a close ally of his, the Court’s only African-American, and Sweeney had made it clear over and over that protecting Wallace was a top personal priority. This was a major dis.

Previous coverage:

• Gov. Christie's nominee for N.J. Supreme Court has donated $23,680 to Republicans in past 17 years

• N.J. Supreme Court chief justice criticizes Gov. Chris Christie for not reappointing Justice Wallace

• Gov. Chris Christie nominates lawyer Anne M. Patterson to N.J. Supreme Court

• Gov. Christie close to making a decision on lifetime tenure for N.J. Justice John Wallace

Star-Ledger opinion and editorial coverage:

• Christie's tied in knots over the Wallace pick

• N.J. Supreme Court on its way to a liberal activist majority for the foreseeable future

• Black bar association back Justice John Wallace

• Removing Supreme Court Justice John E. Wallace Jr. would be a mistake for New Jersey

“I can’t believe you’re doing this governor,” Sweeney said.

Indeed, the governor’s decision on Wallace is a strange one from any angle.

Begin with the politics. The governor said Monday he wants to reshape the court by replacing Wallace with a Republican product liability lawyer from Morris County, Anne Patterson.

But that’s not likely to happen. Because infuriated Democrats intend to retaliate by refusing to confirm her. They vow that they will not even hold confirmation hearings. And the governor has no power to force their hand. He’s picked a fight he is almost certain to lose, never a smart move in politics.

It’s a strange call on the substance as well. Because Wallace is no liberal extremist. At his press conference on Monday, the governor was unable to name a single decision Wallace has made that he found objectionable. Yet here he was ending the career of an even-tempered jurist with unquestioned integrity and intellect.

For the record, Wallace is a mainstream justice. He voted against forcing the Legislature to embrace gay marriage, siding with the more restrained majority that accepted civil unions as a substitute. He voted with the majority to reshape the Abbott school funding decisions so that more money could go to the suburbs, as conservatives have always wanted. He was not even on the court when it made the affordable housing rulings that the governor finds objectionable.

“This is really the ultimate arrogance,” Sweeney said. “To have the nerve to stand up in front of people and make the statement that he is an activist judge.”

But leave Wallace aside for a moment. Leave aside the governor’s habit of treating the Legislature as an afterthought. Leave aside even the fury among African-Americans who now have no voice on the court.

The biggest problem with this move is that it injects partisan politics into the judicial system. Judges face reappointment after seven years, and up to now they have been denied only for misconduct, incompetence, or a failure to show judicial temperament.

By rejecting Wallace, Chrisite is bringing ideology into this. Judges will now have to wonder if voicing their honest convictions might cost them their jobs.

Even Christie’s close political friends are worried about that. Gov. Tom Kean, a mentor of Christie’s, reappointed Democratic judges with whom he fervently disagreed because he felt it was the independence of the judiciary was critical. Christie on Monday said he spoke to Kean about this, and rejected his advice.

Monday, the notoriously reserved Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, a confident of Christie’s who served under him in the U.S. Attorney’’s office, issuing a seering rebuke of this decision on Wallace.

“I am disappointed,” Rabner wrote. "Citizens who turn to the courts for relief are entitled to have their cases resolved by impartial judges who focus only on the even-handed pursuit of justice; litigants should never have to worry that a judge may be more concerned about how a decision could affect his or her reappointment."

Christie ignored all that. And he provoked a big fight with the Legislature just as he needs cooperation on reforms and the state budget.

“He still thinks he’s the prosecutor and can do whatever he wants,” said Sen. Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat who sits on the Judiciary Committee.

This decision ends an era in Trenton, an era when governors in both parties showed restraint on behalf of a cause they all embraced, judicial independence. That’s over now.

Watch for this process to become far more bitter and partisan, for Trenton to become a little more like Washington, where ugly brawls over judicial appointments are common.

Maybe it was inevitable, given the times.

At his press conference Monday, Christie appealed to Democrats to take this blow, and move on.

“All I’m asking of the state Senate is for them to consider Anne Patterson’s credentials on their merits,” he said. “That’s what she deserves.”

He didn’t seem to see the irony. Because that is precisely what Democrats wanted for Wallace.