There is an article in the Daily News today about a bill that Vince Fumo and Tony Williams are pushing to end Philly's judicial elections. This is a topic we have covered extensively at YPP, including our YPP/City Paper project, which lead to this article.
Pre-election, I believed that we needed to get rid of judicial elections in the City. Post-election, I feel even stronger about it. The system is, in my opinion, currently so broken, that we either need a good merit selection process, or a radically different way of electing judges (like public funding, with ward leaders not allowed to accept payments, etc). What became very clear to me after May, was not just that we have sold our offices to the highest bidders (Ceisler, Dubow and Erdos), but that the party uses the sale of judicial offices as the way in which it funds its street machine. The amount of money that was on the the street in the 8th district, as an example, was stunning. Funnelled through the Dwight Evans machine, Donna Miller paid for her election day army with judicial donations. (And some other direct ones to her that seemed to be blatantly illegal, but that is a story for another time.)
That said, the proposal that Fumo and Williams put together absolutely stinks:
His proposed 19-member commission would include four appointees of the governor, three from the Philadelphia Bar Association, three each from the city's Republican and Democratic party chairmen, four from party leaders in the state Senate, and one each from the district attorney and public defender's offices.
First, the whole point of getting rid of this system is to get the proposal out of the hands of the party machines, right, so that we get some better (and maybe less politically connected) judges? And, how in the world does this proposal address that?
Lets assume that, like many years in Pennsylvania, we have a GOP Governor. He gets 4 appointments. Then, for some reason, the GOP party chair, known to maybe 1 percent of Philadelphia, gets three appointments. Then, the GOP in Harrisburg gets another two. So, right off of the bat, we could potentially have 9! GOP appointments, in a City that is overwhelmingly Democratic. Does that make sense?
But, beyond that actual breakdown of the Republican-Democratic lines, again, why would we make 14 out of 19 seats 100 percent political (and because the power is in the hands of party chairs, basically untouchable and more machine oriented than ever)? How in the world will that help?
What about a distinctly un-political field, and if legislators did not like it, they could scrap it?
So, lets start again: 19 Members... How about this: 3 people from the bar. 2 from the DA. 2 from the Defender. 2 from CLS. 2 from the Mayor. 1 from the President of City Council. 1 each from Temple and Penn Law Schools. 1 from each party in Harrisburg. And then three from a rotating number of community groups.
The Governor gets to actually pick the people the panel recommends, so, he does not need appointments himself.
Anyway, you get the point: Why, if we are trying to de-hack the judicial election system, would we want a system that does nothing except further entrench it?
Thanks, Dan, for this analysis
Thanks, Dan, for this analysis. Growing numbers of voters are disgusted with judicial offices going to the highest bidder.
It looks like the political machine is taking note of this shift in public opinion and trying to create a semblance of reform.
I'd say, why 19?
In my opinion, 11 would work.
4 from the bar association (considering lawyers would actually have to practice in front of these judges), split defense, criminal, commercial and plaintiffs-bars.
1 each from the DA and public defender's offices.
1 from CLS.
2 from Senate leadership (republican and democrat).
1 from the Mayor.
1 from Council President.
Why do we need 19 people to do an 11 person job? Clearly, as a member of the Bar, I think the Bar's voice should be heard above all others. Some may disagree. Let's make being a judge more about being a good and respected lawyer than a politican.
I am working to elect Larry Farnese to the General Assembly. Unless otherwise expressly stated, this and every comment or blog I post on YPP and any action I take hereon is solely attributable to me and not Farnese or Friends of Farnese
Your 11 leaves out advocacy/community group representation
And I think their relative numbers should be increased even over Dan's breakdown.
I fail to see why politicians of any stripe should have more representation than citizen groups. There should be balance bewteen legal professionals, legal experts, community/advocacy groups, and I suppose, some state/local political representation.
I think more
I think more community/advocacy groups is good. In my idealized world, since we aren't dealing with zoning, etc., the groups included would not all be CDC's and the like, which seem to always be what 'community representation' tends to in Philly.
Yes, I know.
I count CLS is my community/advocacy group along with the PD's office.
I'm not interested in politicians or community activists being judges because of those factors alone. I think communitiy activists have just as much ability to make things political as politicans.
I'm interested in good, respectable, honest lawyers becoming judges. I do not think you will get either from a large contingent of community groups or politicans. In fact, I'd favor axing the Mayor's and Council President's seats to make it less political. But, the most important aspect is that, as advocates for client bases and representatives of the legal systems, attorneys should take the position of prominence here.
I am working to elect Larry Farnese to the General Assembly. Unless otherwise expressly stated, this and every comment or blog I post on YPP and any action I take hereon is solely attributable to me and not Farnese or Friends of Farnese
Not getting your leap, G.
Having community/advocacy groups on the panel doesn't mean that community/advocacy group members become judges (at least without other qualifications).
This is an opportunity for citizens, through civic society, to create a more accountable system. Bar members should have their place, but they also are essentially an advocacy group - for lawywers. Politicians are clearly an advocacy group - for politicians. Yes, CLS is effectively and advocacy group for citizens, but there should be a more diverse representation.
No doubt, community/advocacy groups are not immune to being political, but in rotating representation and by having representation from a variety of stakeholder groups that political aspect could be mitigated.
I seem to recall you frequently advocating greater civic responsibility. Well, it seems to me that this is an opportunity to make civic responsibility less abstract. Power to the people, baby.
I agree. But, there are
I agree. But, there are lawyers who are community activists who may.
Who is a stakeholder in the court system? Everyone. Civic groups, generally, do not represent everyone, but specific types of people or people interested in a specific issue.
Attorneys, on the other hand, have ethical responsibilities to clients (and some would say future clients) in addition to the court system. I'd say, let community groups sit this one out and let the attorney's at the bar association and CLS, and maybe VIP or Child Advocates, etc., advocate on their behalf (and their clients).
How about this revised panel:
4 from the Bar association
1 from CLS
1 from Volunteers for the Indigent
1 from Support Center for Child Advovates
1 from Disability Law Project
2 from state senate (leadership)
The City Solicitor
1 from DA's office
1 from PD's office
That is a 13 member panel. I can dig that.
I am working to elect Larry Farnese to the General Assembly. Unless otherwise expressly stated, this and every comment or blog I post on YPP and any action I take hereon is solely attributable to me and not Farnese or Friends of Farnese
The least bad system
for choosing judges may be to appoint them. I'm not wild about the idea, however. My guess is that if we could figure out a way to reform the election process, elections would be give us judges who are more diverse and certainly more representative of working and middle class people than any appointment process. And I think it is really good thing for judges to campaign and visit parts of the city to which they have never been. Any city-wide election race is bound to be eye opening, even for someone like myself, who had been to much of the city over the years.
But how do we reform a system of elections? Perhaps public financing and strict limits on contributions to politicians and ward leaders would do it. It might, however, take us back to the day when the City Committee ballot actually meant something. (It was the availability of large sums of money that weakened City Committee and gave power to individual ward leaders and their "consultants.") In some respects that migth not be such a bad result. City Committee ballots tend to be pretty balanced racially and ethnically and, while no doubt some hacks would wind up on the ballot, the kind of real world experience with how people live in diverse parts of the city--the kind of experience one gets in the ward system--might make one a better judge. I know some really great people who have been elected judge having come out of the wards.
My fear is that a system of appointments and any board dominated by established lawyers would give those lawyers far too much power and create a judiciary that might be ethnically diverse but monocromatic as far as income and class is concerned. And I really don't trust upper middle class lawyers to understand what life is like in the working class in the city. Will they be capable of distinguishing, to use the words of Joe Waters, a very good candidate for Muncipal Court last May, between someone "who is a bad guy and someone who is having a bad day?" And such a sytem won't get rid of politics in the process. After all, who is going to be known by the advisory panel? My guess is that it will mostly be established and connected lawyers, many of whom became established and connected in part by giving campaign contributions.
But given the difficulty of fixing elections, then perhaps some kind of appointment system would be the least bad way to go. And given how awful our Supreme Court is due to political influence on it, I tend to agree with Lynn Marks that if we are going to appoint judges we should start there. If we do go that way, Dan's criticisms of the Fumo-Williams bill certainly make a lot of sense. I would disagree with Gaetano, however, and argue that given how important Common Pleas Judges are to community groups in the city, it would be nice to have one or two on the advisory panel.
Good call...
Merit appointment is probably the least-bad way to appoint judges. If it works at the Federal level, then it certainly should work at the state or even muni level. Is it perfect? Heck no! But a system where the executive nominates judges for approval by the State Senate (or the Mayor appoints judges for approval by Council, for instance, as scary as that sounds), could hardly help but be better than what we currently have.
One group which should definitely be involved in the process at some point- the nomination stage, presumably- should be the Pennsylvania Bar Assn., along w/the relevant local Bar. I'm always sure to check Bar recommendations before I vote for any judge, and I don't see why the Executive should be able to do otherwise.
Full disclosure: I count the Hon. Ramy Djerassi + the Hon. John Braxton as friends.
-Z
What Kind of Judges Do We Want?
The first thing we have to do is ask what kind of judges do we want.
Is being a Republican a key credential for service, as it is now on the federal bench, where 85% or more of the judges are now Republicans?
If it is we should find ways to maximize Republican participation in the process, and the Fumo-Williams bill, targeting votes in a Republican-controlled Senate, does that.
Is it important for a judge to have extensive corporate litigation experience? If so, then then we ought to find ways to maximize the role of the corporate bar through the Bar Associations.
Should the baseline for consideration of minority inclusion be the minority percentage of the bar--somewhere around 10%--or should it be the minority percentage of the people of Philadelphia--somewhere around 55%?
Should the baseline for consideration of women be the female percentage of the bar--about 33%--or should it be the percentage of women in the electorate--about 53% statewide and perhaps 60% in Philadelphia?
If we view affirmative action as some kind of nuisance that distracts from the search for quality judges, then we certainly should seek to minimize the role of the electorate.
Personally, I do not think our judiciary needs more Republicans, more corporate litigators, or fewer minorities or women. That will be the result of any merit selection system that is enacted. Once we take judicial election away from the public, it becomes an insiders' game. Pennsylvania has hundreds of administrative law judges selected through civil service, and I would be surprised if any reader of this blog could name five of them. Most readers, I would guess, could not name a single administrative law judge in Pennsylvania, despite the vast power that they have.
I do not like the conversion of elections into auctions, and I think this ought to be far more strenuously resisted than it is. There is no reason whatsoever why groups of concerned citizens could ask far more of judicial candidates than whether or not they were endorsed by the Bar Association. There is no whatsoever why groups of concerned citizens cannot spend time looking at the criminal justice, make recommendations for change, and try to sell judicial candidates on the wisdom of committing themselves to change. In the age of the Internet, there certainly could be many interactive websites and blogs focusing on the merits of various judicial candidates.
In order to limit the power of money in judicial elections, it is vital that those who favor judicial reform support campaign finance limits. For decades now, however, their position has been merit selection or nothing. So we have gotten nothing. In 1969, in a referendum on whether elections should be replaced by merit selection, merit selection lost. Many voters have this stubborn position that they do not want their rights to be taken away, even they assured by those who are far more educated than they are and far wealthier than they are that the taking away of their rights is in their own interest.
Former Senate President Robert Jubelirer and I debated the merits of merit selection at a Pennsylvania Bar Association CLE event some years ago. At one point Jubelirer conceded that the voters in his district "are not pounding on my door demanding that I take away their right to vote for judges." Jubelirer's strong support of merit selection helped contribute to the perception in his district that he was arrogant and out of touch.
The judiciary is not just about skill in writing legal opinions. Merit selection may produce a higher literary quality of judicial opinion, but that is not my main concern or the concern of most Pennsylvanians. Judges decide who wins elections, as President Al Gore has learned all too well. Judges decide the rights of landlords and tenants, the rights of parties in divorces and family support cases, and the merits of suits against corporations by other corporations or average citizens.
In Philadelphia judges make appointments to the Fairmount Park Commission, the Board of Revision of Taxes, and the Board of City Trusts, which administers Girard College, the Wills Eye Hospital, and various other things.
Merit selection merely means appointment. Appointment is not in and of itself a sign of true merit. New Jersey appoints judges and district attorneys and still manages to have its share of scandals involving judges and prosecutors at all levels.
What is the judiciary about?
If it is not about the interpretation and application of laws in cases before it?
I'm understanding most of what you are saying, but it seems you are saying judges should look to goals larger than the cases in front of them. For that, I disagree. Even in Roe, an opinion I support, the judiciary was concerned with the legal rights of one person in the case in front of it.
The rule of law applies generally, but I'm a bit uncomfortabe with judges going beyond the case, the facts of the case, the law and the equities of any given situation. Courts are about redress. If we make them anything more, we blur the meaning of the judiciary. That is why there are excellent doctrines that disregard cases that are moot or where there is no controversy.
How about you?
And, if you agree, why is having skilled, honest and ethical lawyers (of any sort or value system) a bad thing? Merit selection is not perfect. Niether is judicial election. The quest should be: how do we place the best, brightest, most honest and ethical lawyers on the bench the fastest. Nothing more.
I am working to elect Larry Farnese to the General Assembly. Unless otherwise expressly stated, this and every comment or blog I post on YPP and any action I take hereon is solely attributable to me and not Farnese or Friends of Farnese
The Cases In Front Of The Judges Have Larger Contexts
The Dred Scott case upholding the constitutionality of slavery was on one level only about property rights. In upholding that Scott was really property, the U.S. Supreme Court certainly upheld the right of property holders everywhere. They also guaranteed the coming of the Civil War, which led to the deaths of over 600,000 Americans and nearly a century of legally second class treatment for the freed slaves.
The facts themselves should determine the outcomes of cases, but facts have contexts. When I was a plaintiff against a neighborhood drug dealer in Common Pleas Court, the judge could have merely asserted that the case was about property rights and allowed the drug dealer to keep his house. Fortunately, the judge recognized community concerns about drug houses and ruled against the drug dealer; the house is now the location of several quality apartments and is a credit to the community.
There may not be a person alive who against having "skilled, honest, and ethical judges." But what their values are is vital. A judge worried that ruling against a drug dealer would imperil the property rights of major corporations--just as the National Rifle Association argues that measures keeping guns out of the hands of criminals will endanger the right of hunters to hunt or law-abiding citizens to protect themselves--would have been more likely to rule in favor the neighborhood drug dealer's property rights.
Cases have numerous procedural rules. Every procedurual rule is not followed by every party 100% of the time. A judge who handles a legal dispute between an overworked CLS lawyer or other overworked and underpaid public interest attorney and ten or fifteen skilled and focused corporate attorneys should be aware than one side has a far greater ability to meet every single procedural requirement than the other side does. How the judge enforces the procedural requirements could well make the difference between whether or not a person loses his or her home or his or her job.
Running for office can be a very demeaning experience at times. It certainly is far more expensive than merely filing an application for a job somewhere.
But an election process is more open than an appointive process. New Jersey, for instance, had its first black Supreme Court Justice 25 years or so after Pennsylvania did, despite having a higher percentage of black and other minority citizens than Pennsylvania does.
The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court was the first appellate court in America to have a female majority. And the gain in quality of an appointive process is far from proven.
I have looked hard for studies comparing elective states and appointive states, and concluding that the appointive judges do a better job in meeting measurable criteria.
Despite more than 60 years of advocacy from Bar Associations across the country, I have not found a single comparative study that finds higher judicial quality in measurable criteria in appointive states than elected states. If anyone knows of any such study, I would welcome having that information.
This myth of judicial neutrality
Sure we want bright, honest, ethical, lawyers to become judges.
But we also want judges who share our ideals. The notion that there are some neutral, ideology-free, critera for making judicial decisions that transcends any political ideals is a myth. And that is not to come to the opposite conclusion, that judges simply make it up as they go along and decide on the basis of the policy goals or what they had for breakfast. There are, I believe, reasonable and unreasonble ways of applying laws to particular cases. But, at the cutting edge of the law, there is more than one such reasonable way. And judges like judicial observers choose between one and another approach to interpreting the law based upon which view makes the most sense of the law given everythign they know, including their political and moral ideals.
So I want smart, honest, ethical judges who share my ideals. And my reservation about appointing judges, like my reservations about giving judges too much authority in a democratic political system, is that the kinds of judges who are likely to be appointed won't share my ideals, especially about social justice.
PS This might be a good place to point to a very good recent article in the Times that points to how judges use their power to protect the power and interests of lawyers and why that sometimes leads to bad public policy. See http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FB0710F93D5E0C74...
PPS This post obviously rests on some controversial claims about how judges can and should interpret the law. For anyone interested, my ideas on judicial interpretation have been mostly shaped by Ronald Dworkin. My one small contribution to the debate about the intrepretation of law can be found at http://www.stier.net/writing/other/legreal11.pdf. This article implicitly rests on the neo-pragmatic account of political and moral reason I have developed. A sketch of it can be found at http://www.stier.net/writing/other/Three_ends.pdf,
The myths of "our" and what judges do with their time.
First, Marc, you make one glaring error when you say "our ideals." What ideals are those? Considering PA has a unified judicial system, and not just "progressives" are entitiled to "smart, honest, ethical judges who share my ideals," we should explore this.
Are they the ideals of progressive whites from Mount Airy, Black Christians who live in West Philadelphia, artists in Frankford, ethinic whites in South and Northeast Philly, Jewish folks in Summerton, political bloggers on the internet, lawyers from large firms, Mexican immigrants in South Philly, Puetro Ricans on North 5th street, civic groups from the river front. Who is "our" and what are "our ideals"?
Any system, and I'm not really advocating for or against merit selection because I actually do think it better on the appeallate court level first, must focus on getting the best lawyers possible on the bench. Until you identify what "our ideals" are, would you ever know if you were speaking for Philadelphians and their ideals.
Also, whether you believe it or not, the vast majority of judicial time is not spent deciding cases like Roe v. Wade, Dred Scott or Brown. Those cases, particularly Roe and Brown are hallmarks. Dred Scott was just terrible. Rather, most judicial, particularly trial court judges' time it is spent not on deciding hallmarks of constitutional law, but negligence cases, bail amounts, discovery motions, breaches of contract, admissible evidence and procedural issues. 99% of a judges time is not spent authoring opinions on the 14th Amendment.
It is fine you want judges to share "your ideals", but as someone who goes in front of judges on behalf of clients, I want someone who can apply the legal standards properly and with efficiency--not take 6 months to decide a summary judgment motion that has merit and certainly not someone who hasn't tried a case.
I am working to elect Larry Farnese to the General Assembly. Unless otherwise expressly stated, this and every comment or blog I post on YPP and any action I take hereon is solely attributable to me and not Farnese or Friends of Farnese
Splitting the Difference
When Mark writes "we want judges who share our ideals," I read that as "everyone wants judges who share their ideals," not necessarily as positing a unified "we" or "our." Mark further clarifies that in particular, "I want judges who share my ideals."
I would add, more prosaically, that no one wants judges that seem likely to work against their interests -- or a system of choosing judges that amounts to the same thing. The larger point is that there isn't a purely procedural-minded, value-free position that we can judge judges from. At any rate, voters don't do this, and you can argue that they either can't or shouldn't try to do this. Technical competence would be a necessary but not sufficient condition for what people would think of as a "good" judge. And what people think is "good" for them will vary, but not their insistence on the right to believe it.
Gaetano's position, then, isn't really a refutation of this claim, but a particular version of it. As "someone who goes in front of judges on behalf of clients," your interests skew more technical than Mark's, or mine, or the vast majority of the citizens, who don't practice law. In fact, besides jury duty, many of us never step foot in a courtroom -- and even those who do, arguably depend more on the substance of decisions than their procedural form.
--Tim
Said better than I did
Tim summed up my claims very well. I just want to add one point.
There is a big difference between a judge who simply tries to advance his political and moral ideals in his decisions and one who tries to advance those ideals in the context of trying to give a responsible interpretation of statutes and case law. I've criticized William O. Douglas before for being the first kind of judge. There are more than a few judges on the Common Pleas court who could be described this way as well. They make a political decision and then leave it to their law clerk to come up with some kind of justification.
The problem with shoot from the hip judges is that, even if they support my political and moral ideals, they--and the kind of law they create--is unpredictable and arbitrary. Some of the time in the law it is more important to have consistent decision making than to have decisions that go in one direction or another. I would think that lawyers who are responsible and who take the law seriously would like to face judges who see themselves constrained by statute and precedent in this way and who are personally consistent from case to case. Only when the law is applied in this way can lawyers give their clients good advice about what is likely to happen in a trial.
So I think that I am taking into account Gaetano's concerns for technical competence in my account of what i good adjudication to be. But I am pointing out that adjudication is never just a matter of technical competence. And, as Mark Cohen rightfully points out, that is more true in major cases than in minor ones. (Although, I would think that even if, for example, the SEPTA transfer case, there was a technically responsible way to rule in either direction.)
Major Cases Are Extremely Important Even If They Are Rare
Major cases are extremely important even if they are are rare. They determine many thousands of minor cases and how lawyers and concerned citizens look at the law.
The infamous case of Bush V. Gore, in which Bush was elected President by a 5 to 4 vote of the U.S. Supreme Court, seven of whom were appointed by Republican Presidents, was only one case out of over 500 decided by the Supreme Court since 2000, but it is quite possibly more important than all the other cases combined.
Courts are--I think virtually everyone understands--a branch of government. They decide both who wields governmental power, what the scope of governmental power is, and, often, what the outcome of the use of governmental power is. Nothing stops litigators from settling their disputes themselves, without governmental involvement, and nothing stops litigators from paying private persons to settle the disputes instead of judges.
The election of judges in Pennsylvania makes the very clear statement that the judiciary springs from public mandates and is at least somewhat accountable to the public. Litigators certainly have, througn the Bar Association and through individual contributions far more influence than the average person does in selecting who the judges should be. Power in American democracy is inherently diffused, and everybody who participates in government in any way has to come to grips with the fact because power is diffused, few if any persons have the degree of power they would like.
Judicial Elections and Public Mandates
Again, I'm not entirely sold on trial court appointments, but your use of the word "mandate" is a bit liberal (pun intended).
Low voter turnout and even less interest in judicial elections does not equate to a public mandate. Only those with vested interests in both would argue they do. In talking with voters, regular folk, do you want to know why they vote for judges: Some people vote for judges because their names sound Irish, Black, Italian or Jewish. Some people vote for the first X number of judges. Other people vote for just female candidates. Others prefer candidates who went to a certain law school. The average voter, IF they even bother to vote for a single judge, does not look at the Bar Association recommendations.
Representative, can you please explain to me, how is this a public mandate?
Again, Representative, how do we put the best and most ethical lawyers on the bench? Is it elections? If so, tell me how that is the case.
I am working to elect Larry Farnese to the General Assembly. Unless otherwise expressly stated, this and every comment or blog I post on YPP and any action I take hereon is solely attributable to me and not Farnese or Friends of Farnese
First, We Figure Out How To Measure The Best And Most Ethical
To put the best and most ethical lawyers on the Court, we have to measure those qualities.
The problem is that there is no objective measurement of these qualities. Not even the Bar Association has claimed that its candidates who are recommended are "the best and most ethical."
Duck and Cover
As always, Representative Cohen likes to obsure one of the more important points in a comment. I stated:
Again, I'm not entirely sold on trial court appointments, but your use of the word "mandate" is a bit liberal (pun intended).
Low voter turnout and even less interest in judicial elections does not equate to a public mandate. Only those with vested interests in both would argue they do. In talking with voters, regular folk, do you want to know why they vote for judges: Some people vote for judges because their names sound Irish, Black, Italian or Jewish. Some people vote for the first X number of judges. Other people vote for just female candidates. Others prefer candidates who went to a certain law school. The average voter, IF they even bother to vote for a single judge, does not look at the Bar Association recommendations.
Here is what I think, and, like I said previously, I'm not entirely sold on trial court appointments, but it seems like we could at least give them a try considering the election of judges is so controversial and the judiciary so politicized. There are, however, vested interests in the system of electing judges. And, when someone uses the term "public mandate" so loosely, I can't help but think you are one of them. And, those interests may fear loosing the influence they have on the process.
I am working to elect Larry Farnese to the General Assembly. Unless otherwise expressly stated, this and every comment or blog I post on YPP and any action I take hereon is solely attributable to me and not Farnese or Friends of Farnese
Judges, Money and democracy (small "d")
It is misdirected to look at Ward leaders as where money went in the last election. If you look at campaign reports, Erdos, Ceisler and Dubow spent only a small portion of their money on ward leaders and for Committee People. This election may have been bought, but look at TV and direct mail as the place where money was spent. (b/t/w/ this site was in a lovefest with at least two of those candidates and perhaps all three).
Anti-democratic elitism has been the history of many reform movements in this country. Why does voter picking Judge's scare people so much. I would rather be ruled by the first 200 people in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard. This whole "merit" selection movement smacks of elitism and has an antidemocratic under current.
If you want "merit" selection, why stop at judges, why not Congress, City Council, Mayor and President. Why not have organized labor, victim rights and homeless advocates on the Committee to select judges,. Why not NAMBLA and representatives from major and minor religions. There is no place to stop.
Finally, look at the federal judiciary if you want an example of "merit" selection. No politics?, No elitism?. Just anti worker and working class bias.
Reductio Ad Hominem
Clearly, anyone who holds a political office because they're picked from a small group of people rather than elected directly by the people isn't really legitimate. That's just common sense -- they aren't going to be as responsive to the average citizen as they are to the people who get to pick them, even if those people are elected.
This is why we can all count on Lou Agre to propose and campaign for a rules change that could really transform Philadelphia politics. He's going to push for the direct election of ward leaders by party members, rather than their committee representatives. Believe me, Lou -- I am with you all the way.
(I'm teasing, but only a little.)
--Tim