From Kentucky Law Blog, Judicial Politics: Could Elsewhere be here? And the time for considering judicial appointments is now!
“I have heard change seldom occurs without a crisis and seldom without discomfort, but do we need devastation of our judicial landscape before we take the newly added ingredients of political pandering for money and partisanship out of our judicial elections (thanks to the lawsuit by Kentucky Supreme Court candidate Marcus Carey)?
From Kentucky Law Blog, Judicial Politics: Could Elsewhere be here? And the time for considering judicial appointments is now!
“I have heard change seldom occurs without a crisis and seldom without discomfort, but do we need devastation of our judicial landscape before we take the newly added ingredients of political pandering for money and partisanship out of our judicial elections (thanks to the lawsuit by Kentucky Supreme Court candidate Marcus Carey)?
How long do we want a person whom we want to be fair and impartial in dispensing “equal justice for all” to be making personal phone calls to lawyers and potential litigants alike asking for campaign contributions? cultivating a partisan constituency by promoting political party affiliation? announcing positions on abortion, guns, gays, Ten Commandments, and other “hot button” topics that catch the voters’ attention and give the impression of their judicial bias before taking the oath to uphold the constitution?
Worse yet, how much longer do we want those judicial candidates who are already sitting judges running for the same or another bench acting in a manner that would otherwise be prohibited if there had been no election?
We currently elect all judges. A constitutional amendment would be required to change elections to some form of an appointment procedure (all or just the appellate judges appointed) with or without a recall procedure and with or without term limits.
Once upon a time judges were senior lawyers with gray hair sharing years of practical experience from the bench. Now many of those gray hairs are being earned while on the bench rather than prior to the bench…
The future of judicial politics may not have reached critical mass, but the foundation of where we are going has been laid and we will be there soon enough. If the concerns do not reach critical in the next two weeks, then they might in the next judicial cycle in four years, or the cycle after that in eight years from now.”
Now that partisan party politics can play a legit role in judicial elections, it will be ever more difficult to lobby for such a constitutional amendment. Neither Democrats not Republicans will want to cede their encroachment into the third branch of government, where independence and neutrality is a constitutional cornerstone. The judicial branch may have to fall into crisis and discomfort, as Mike Steven’s post suggests, before reform will be forthcoming. It breaks my heart.
