One Man, One Vote, One Time
January 8, 2009
They’re baaack! Our friends over at Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts are once again using their JudgesOnMerit blog to push to take the power over who chooses the state’s top judges from the more than 8.7 million voters and hand it over to a 14-member committee dominated by legal special interests. In the new post, Shira Goodman takes a not so thinly veiled swipe at Temple Law Professor Marina Angel, who has fought tirelessly to protect the constitutional right of Pennsylvania voters to determine who will control one-third of the state’s government. Professor Angel is more than capable of defending her position and I look forward to her retort, but I have to say it’s more than a little ironic that Ms. Goodman wants us to believe that it’s actually her group that “trust[s] the people of Pennsylvania” and wonders why her “confidence in the public is not shared.”
So let me get this straight: Supporting a vote on a constitutional amendment that would abolish the franchise when it comes to judicial selection represents “trust” in the voters? But fighting to protect the right of every Pennsylvania voter to choose his/her own judges in democratic elections suggests a lack of confidence?
Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts has been pushing this Orwellian logic with little success for about 25 years. Along with Professor Angel, I hope the state legislature continues to reject this “one man, one vote, one time” version of democracy.