Are Pennsylvanians Really Too Stupid To Elect Judges?
May 12, 2009
The Philadelphia Inquirer is out with a slate of judicial endorsements, but not before trashing the idea that judges should be chosen by the people through democratic elections. Voters, the editors grumble, “may well apply the usual uninformed criteria” when deciding who to put on the bench. (And these are the same folks who sit around scratching their heads wondering why newspapers are losing readers in droves – to bloggers, no less – and filing for bankruptcy.)
Judgesonmerit.org – part of the national campaign bankrolled by hedge fund billionaire George Soros to let legal special interests pick judges – also has a post highlighting the “flawed election process” that permits mere citizens to determine who will control one-third of Pennsylvania’s state government.
So what “informed” criteria does the Inquirer use to persuade voters about the merit of the candidates it’s endorsing? Well, one candidate, the Inquirer tells us, is the “the city’s ‘only openly gay judge’ and strives to keep all bias from his courtroom.” Another is a “distant cousin” of a jailed former City Council member who is recommended in part because of his “charitable works.” Yet another “served as chief of staff to his City Council president father and ran a bank branch” before turning to the law.
These prospective judges may well be fine, upstanding citizens who would be a credit to the bench. But is the Inquirer’s reasoning really so superior that the paper’s readers should cower at the thought of approaching local polling places with their “uninformed” opinions? Is it really any less arbitrary than the biases an ordinary citizen would bring to the voting booth?
Ah, but the Inquirer’s choices have all been vetted by the Philadelphia Bar Association, which should be a “major deciding factor” in voters’ decisions. Now we get to the heart of the matter. “For now,” the Inquirer writes, “voters have the first and last word” on choosing judges. That ominous “for now” is a plea for an end to democratic judicial elections. In the perfect world envisioned by the Inquirer and judgesonmerit.org, groups like the Philadelphia Bar Association and other legal special interests would be given a privileged position in deciding who should sit on the bench. In fact, the Inquirer and judgesonmerit.org are so infatuated with the views of lawyers they want to remove voters from the process and turn the whole job of picking judges over to legal elites.
Unfortunately, from their perspective, to reach this nirvana of lawyer-selected judges they need to revoke the Constitutional right of Pennsylvanians to choose jurists democratically. They’ve been pushing that rock up the hill for about 20 years, so far with little success. So “for now” democracy reigns in Pennsylvania and the people still have the right to pick their public servants on the bench.
Posted by Dan Pero in the categories: Judicial Elections, Pennsylvania
One Response to “Are Pennsylvanians Really Too Stupid To Elect Judges?”
Dan, we disagree strongly on almost everything, though hopefully not MSU athletics. You do take a nice picture, though.
http://www.attorneybutler.net/2009/05/are-michiganders-really-too-stupid-to-elect-judges.html