But We’re Only Taking Away Your Right To Vote For The Most Important Judges
April 4, 2008
Another “Choose Judges on Merit” blogger helpfully reminds us that the “merit selection” gang wants to abolish elections for only 31 appellate judges out of 1,048 judges in Pennsylvania.
She reassures us that “appellate courts aren’t places where people come to tell their side of the story” – they’re just courts where “lawyers make legal arguments about possible errors in trial …”
Excuse me?
Appellate courts are the most important courts in the state, next to the supreme court. The decisions of appellate judges are binding on all lower courts in their jurisdictions, and they directly impact the lives of millions of state citizens.
The authors of Pennsylvania’s Constitution wanted all judges to be accountable to the people. Turning the most important courts in the state into a “lawyers only” club isn’t the kind of accountability they had in mind.
Maybe the folks over at Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts ought to start a new group: Pennsylvanians for a Modern Presidency. They could call for abolishing these expensive, harshly partisan presidential elections we have every four years and just have some appointed committee pick the president. After all, the president is only 1 person out of 536 elected officials at the national level – less than 1 percent of the total!
Posted by Dan Pero in the categories: Judicial Elections, Pennsylvania, State Battlegrounds
2 Responses to “But We’re Only Taking Away Your Right To Vote For The Most Important Judges”
Thanks for writing about Merit Selection in Pennsylvania. We agree that appellate courts are very important courts with an enormous impact on the lives of the people and the state of the law. The point my post made was not that these courts are less important than other courts, but that they are different and that is one reason that choosing the judges of these courts in a different way makes sense.
[...] Friday, April 4th, Dan Pero of AmericanCourthouse.com posted two items critical of our perspective on judicial selection of appellate judges in [...]