This is the kind of stupidity you get with elected judges.
In the last election, I tried to find out about the local judges on my ballot and could find virtually nothing.
The media has been neutered in to an infotainment machine, so there's very little investigative journalism left even on issues of national or international importance, much less on small issues like who your local judges are and how they rule.
This is definitely one of the problems. There was a study that showed judges were handing stricter sentences for the same crime during election years than non election years ("tough on crime"). Elections are a popularity contest in a way, even well informed voters do not always make rational decisions.
If one doesn't have elections to worry about, he/she can do their job to the best of their ability without thinking about pleasing anyone or pandering to any one group, just good old honest work. The moment they have to think about elections, things change. What kind of judge would you like to have - someone who is totally honest and fair without giving a crap about what others think, or someone who is trying to be popular?
Jefferson, Madison, at al feared the Judiciary for a reason. Particularly the Federal tier. Elected judges have a built in check in that they are subject to periodic reaffirmation of confidence from the populace. An appointed judge just needs the right connections once, and to not do anything on such a regular basis that they become the subject of an ethics investigation.
I don't know which one is worse. Maybe both are equally bad.
Then again, maybe you could make a longer term work with some sort of "anti-election" mechanism. You vote in/appoint/have judges nominated by the bar, whatever, and periodically, a dismissal election is held. If a certain threshold of votes for dismissal/no-confidence are cast, then that triggers a conventional election/run-off for that judges spot. In that sense, the judge no longer has to actively politik, though those vying for the spot are free to campaign to try to get people displeased enough to trigger an election.
It still seems like it may only work with a populace who stays on top of their judges, but I actually kind of like the idea because in theory, good judges would never really be upset from business as usual, bad ones would very quickly become apparent in theory, since the number of corrupt supporters would be very unlikely to dwarf the number of "victims" of the judges corrupt acts, and you get away from some of the politicization of the position except when the public clearly has a change in the winds of policy in mind, in which case the election may put the judge back in office, but with renewed attention to the change in civil sentiment.
I don't know, it just feels better to me that way. I mean I do kinda get where Go's coming from, and I semi-dig it. I just don't think judges should ever be more than arms length away from the people whose lives they impact most.
Maybe your state has something similar. I found it useful to read a couple decisions written by the judges on our last ballot.
I'm pretty sure it is... why would you elect a judge? They're not supposed to apply any opinion just interpret the law technically. What are people voting for them based on? Their political affiliation? That's absolutely bonkers.
Its kind of like how two competent people can implement a POSIX compliant operating system in different ways (microkernel or monolithic, emacs vs vi, systemd vs sysvinit).
Their qualifications, history, and biases. I mean it isn't like most judges are getting the position without having a law degree, so the majority of them are in fact qualified for the position. So how else do you fill a public position when you have multiple qualified people and a single position. The argument for election is so to reduce nepotism and cronyism.
They should leave them at home if they're a freaking judge!!
You're telling me that Gorsuch doesn't have biases? RBG? Kavanaugh? Roberts? Sotomayor?
All these people interpret the same laws in different ways. If that isn't called bias than I don't know what is. The issue is that there is no objective truth, at least one which can be known. All laws are subject to interpretation. In fact, that is literally why we have judges and juries in the first place. To scrutinize and check interpretation of laws.
Are you telling me there's an objective truth to what "Freedom of Speech" means? What "the right to bare arms" is?
If there are major questions of interpretation they leave it to the legislature to clarify.
I'm not sure why you would expect judges to be a special class of people that are void of opinions.
Also, speaking as somebody who recently voted for local judges and prosecutors, I got to choose a prosecutor who won't take police-union money and a judge who thinks they can do better than the possibly-corrupt incumbent. I wouldn't give up this vote just for some imagined peace in the political process.
You see this seems massively inappropriate in the first place. Take that money for what? A prosecutor shouldn't take any money from anyone, in any circumstance, apart from their salary. They shouldn't even be talking to a political organisation like a union.
Both things seem like grounds for automatic dismissal for a prosecutor. Why are you having to check for it as a voter?
Yes, it's stressful being a vigilant voter. But what's the alternative? Not caring?
Instead we have a situation where, as the article points out, corruption is swept away where people get to walk away with a cozy retirement and say 'well gosh I regret my mistakes' as if that fixes the fact that they ruined someone's life over a failure to pay traffic fees.
That's the example of the revolving door and people who abuse it get away scott-free.
Not electing prosecutors and judges.
That's where this thread started.
> In the last election, I tried to find out about the local judges on my ballot and could find virtually nothing.
In my last election I had the voting booklet. There were two judges running for a position. One had a website and the other (the incumbent) didn't.
Honestly, a lot of candidates I found didn't have websites. If you aren't going to take the time to make a simple website to state your policies I'm not sure I trust you to be transparent and make decisions on my behalf. In 2020 if you don't have a website you are demonstrating to me that you don't want to inform me, the voter, about yourself.
What would you like to see on a judge's website? Their opinions on things? They shouldn't have any personal opinions!
Like... voters?
> What would you like to see on a judge's website?
Qualifications, what ideals are important to them, how they handled complex cases, etc
> They shouldn't have any personal opinions!
Unfortunately they are human, so they do have personal opinions. They are allowed to have personal opinions. They just aren't allowed to have party affiliations. But if you look at the supreme court this is clearly also an absurd notion to expect them to not have leanings.
In the US could a town elect a judge who says they're going to convict everyone who's left-handed?
> they don't try to appeal to anyone, they just implement it. Is this not how it works in the US?
On paper, yes. In practice, no. Because again, laws aren't objective.
> In the US could a town elect a judge who says they're going to convict everyone who's left-handed?
Let's rephrase it.
> In the US could a town elect a judge who says they're going to convict everyone who's black?
Welcome to Jim Crow era. So the answer is clearly yes. Of course, conviction still relies on the jury and "jury nullification" exists in an effort to put these types of judges in check. This is why you're supposed to be judged by peers. Now there is interpretation of what peers means. Or what community is. Is this your neighbors? Or is this just people that live in the town? Are people in the Brooklyn your peers if you live in Queens? What about if you live in Mountain View? If you do a search you'll quickly find different answers from legal scholars as to what "jury of peers" means. I brought up the first and second amendments because these are frequently debated in the public domain (where judges/legal scholars are debating and we the public can see and listen in).
To me, the idea that laws are objective and not up for interpretation is "bat-shit insane." To do so would require perfect humans writing laws and last time I checked we didn't have any of those.
If they're open to too much interpretation... send them back to the legislature to clarify.
> Welcome to Jim Crow era. So the answer is clearly yes.
Well this seems like an indication to me that the system is not great.
Good idea. Now what do we do in the mean time with people that are being tried? Wait? How? Are they free or in jail? What's the default position?
Or do we just do our best (i.e. interpretation)?
> Well this seems like an indication to me that the system is not great.
Well... yeah... I don't think anyone has claimed it as such. If you have a better system I think a lot of people would be happy.
The issue is that there's lots of nuances involved. Even if we had Multivac judging it would still be difficult. People can't write code to be absolutely unambiguous and error proof. Code that takes into account every possible scenario. So I'm not sure why you would expect people that are in a more complex feature environment and using a less precise language would be able to perform better. This is really absurd, to me.
HUMANS ARE NOT PERFECT ROBOTS.
And I'm not sure why this is a controversial opinion.
> And I'm not sure why this is a controversial opinion.
I think by asking them to stand for election you make them less perfect and amplify their flaws, because they have to appeal to some sector. Do they appeal to left-wing extremes, or right-wing extremes? They can't easily target both. They can't just do what they think is right. They have to pander to some niche.
Plainly applying the law doesn't win votes.
The only people who will votes are those who promise to twist it to some extreme.
> The argument for election is so to reduce nepotism and cronyism.
So we come back to the question: "Which is better? Elected judges or appointed judges?"
> They can't just do what they think is right. They have to pander to some niche.
The question is about who's bias you are using to appoint the judge. Are you using the bias of current lawmakers/elites? Or are you using the bias of the public? You're right in that they have to pander to some niche. So which do you want?
I also mentioned in another thread that the point of democracy is to distribute power. Letting officials is a consolidation of power. Letting the public do it is distribution. There's advantages to both.
And honestly, looking at voter information guides, judges are mostly talking about their qualifications and how they are unbiased. In my last guide there were two judges. One said that he served the community well and cited some cases. The other said we need more transparency and that as a judge he would make rulings public to increase transparency of the law. Neither were really pandering to parties. Judges aren't allowed to be affiliated with parties. Neither of those judges were saying things like: "We're going to get those black people," (like Jim Crow era) "I'm a liberal and hold left-wing values," or even things like "I'm concerned with immigration law." The latter because it would be considered political. There are guidelines. These guidelines are to restrict their ability to make party appeals. At least pandering to the public is more transparent.
But when it comes down to it, it really is a question of who they are pandering to, not if they pander. There has to be some mechanism to appoint judges, and they will just pander to whoever is in charge of that.
Civil law is a lot less flexible. Most of the world uses civil law. Common law is I think exclusive to the former British colonies.
Judges are the one who recommend the sentencing length, their is guideline and its upto the judge to give the minimum or maximum or in between.
Unfortunately wrong. https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_election_of_judges
Many laws are not so black and white that the decision is explicit. You have to handle weird chain of custody questions, whether evidence was seized lawfully, etc, etc.
A few months after Judge Hayes’ suspension ended, his term as a municipal judge was set to expire. So, the Montgomery City Council took up the question of the judge’s future on March 6, 2018. On the agenda of its meeting: whether to reappoint Hayes to another four-year term.
Everyone on that city council knew, for years, what a terrible judge they had hired. This seems to undercut the idea that appointing judges is some sort of solution to the problem of injustice in USA.
A bit of a survey from the Venice Commission, some sort of gang of euro-judicial boffins:
https://www.icj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/CDL-AD2007_02...
I certainly hope we can improve our "judicial" system in USA, to make it more just, less tyrannical, less capricious, less totalitarian, less active, etc. Sometimes I wonder whether that's possible for a society that's happy to spend $750B/yr on killing machines and in fact has killed millions of innocents overseas over the last several decades. As Thucydides wrote, the tyranny that the Athenian empire imposed on others it eventually imposed on itself.
Lower level appointments go thru a provincial JAAC, while superior and above go thru a federal JAAC. After JAAC's shortlisting, the respective provincial or federal government or minister of justice decides.
I suppose there's always a way to stack the committee to get a biased shortlist to choose from, but the committees aren't all appointed by the government. Some are appointed by judges, law society, etc. In practice, it seems to work way better than just having a city council choose.
I admit I don't know how judges in other countries are appointed, but I think it usually involves a pretty thorough screening process involving several different requirements and organisations.
They voted for a judge because they thought he would be "tough on crime", or some other slogan. I am really speculating here. The reason though is a lack of information on the voters part. I am not sure how we solve that problem though.
Judges like this should be put disbarred so that they cant practice law or serve time themselves.
That's just your opinion, and you're in the minority. Probably most people in that jurisdiction are happy with the overall behavior of the judge.
Democracy doesn't care about the needs of the individual, only the wants of the group. The group wants exclusive use of a particular area, thus limits parking. Public streets with reserved parking, the antithesis of a functioning society.