Any “Merit” In Wisconsin?
September 16, 2009
The Wisconsin State Journal rolled out another editorial calling for an end to democratic judicial selections and the adoption of “merit” selection - where a privileged class of elite lawyers decides who will sit on the bench. “Introducing partisan elections to the judicial branch,” the editorial solemnly intones:
“endangers judicial independence within the government system of checks and balances. Electing judges by majority vote in partisan ballots (i.e. by democracy) flies in the face of the judicial branch’s responsibilities to be independent of partisan influences and to check the power of the majority from trampling on the constitutional rights of the minority.”
Well!
Let’s leave aside the obvious point that judges chosen by a committee of lawyers are hardly “independent” of influences, partisan or otherwise. But the notion that judges selected by a privileged class, rather than ordinary voters, would be better able to maintain our system of checks and balances is something that would have shocked our nation’s Founders, who believed judges should be independent, but also accountable to the people. As James Madison - someone who knew a little about checks and balances - put it in Federalist 39:
“It is essential to such a government [a democracy] that it be derived from the great body of society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or favored class of it.”
The Journal informs us that “some of the state’s best minds” are gathering at a special conference and will be “evaluating the problem.” (For $150, you can even attend the event and watch the best minds at work). But isn’t the whole idea behind democracy that well all have a say in who rules us … even those of us who aren’t among the state’s “best minds?”
Democratic elections have their problems, and money is certainly an issue. But taking decisions about judicial selection away from “the great body of society” (i.e. the voters) and turning it over to a “favored class” (i.e. a “merit” board controlled by lawyers) would make judges even more insulated and even less accountable - which is the overriding reason why judicial elections have become so partisan in the first place.