Seating judges
Merit selection the best way If you walked into the voting booth Tuesday and scratched your head when confronted with the confusion of names listed under the state’s three courts – Supreme, Superior and Commonwealth – you weren’t alone. Figuring out which judicial candidates should get your vote is no easy task. The candidates aren’t really allowed – by law – to voice much in the way of opinions. So their educations and backgrounds become the basis on which some voters try to figure out who to vote for. That, plus bar ratings and newspaper endorsements.
Some folks don’t even bother trying to make an informed choice. They choose candidates on the basis of sex, ethnicity, geography, or ballot position – if they vote at all. This is no way to elevate people to the critical position of judge. It becomes a guessing game because there isn’t much to go on, and so the candidates remain strangers. Even when candidates do run a traditional campaign in an effort to become known the usual tactics prevail: attack ads that distort the opponent’s record.
Case in point is this year’s race for Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the state’s highest court. Both candidates were career judges with impressive resumes. And they both received the state bar panel’s top rating of “highly recommended.” Both also received a ton of special interest money that fueled campaign spending, including ads that made “misleading, if not outright inaccurate, claims about the opposition,” according to The Associated Press. This also is no way to choose a judge. In our view, state judges should be appointed on the basis of merit. That’s what most states do.
And while critics make a valid point that politics affects the appointive process as well, merit selection at least weeds out the low-grade candidates. Granted, no system is perfect. But appointing judges on the basis of merit beats the current process, which essentially involves throwing darts at a list of names.
Bucks County Courier Times