Question

Judges are powerful players in the criminal Justice System. They rule on admissibility of evidence and testimony. They sign affidavits for search and arrest warrants, and sentence defendants found guilty of criminal offenses, and make rulings on civil cases.

Please describe how judges are selected to the bench.( appointed,Elected).

Give your opinion good or bad on these methods with attention given to the present confirmation process we are witnessing for a Supreme court Justice.

Answer 1

1. Selection of State Court Judges

How state court judges are selected varies by state. States choose judges in any of the following ways:

Appointment: The state's governor or legislature will choose their judges.

Merit Selection: Judges are chosen by a legislative committee based on each potential judge's past performance. Some states hold "retention elections" to determine if the judge should continue to serve.

Partisan Elections: Judges selected through partisan elections are voted in by the electorate, and often run as part of a political party's slate of candidates.

Non-Partisan Elections: Potential judges that run for a judicial position in states with non-partisan elections put their names on the ballot, but do not list their party affiliates. Terms for judges in non-partisan elections can range between 6 and 10 years.

2. In my personal opinion, the selection methods of judges are not in right way. "Putting courts into politics, and compelling judges to become politicians, in many jurisdictions has almost destroyed the traditional respect for the bench," one commentator famously wrote on the causes of popular dissatisfaction with the administration of justice. And this was back in 1906. For most of the century since that time, lawyers, judges, law professors, and other court reformers have wrestled with the problem of how to select judges in a way that remains consistent with American democratic traditions and still obeys the popular will.

Currently, there are six methods of selecting judges, each variations on three basic models: appointment, election, and a third idea--"merit selection" that has been the major "reform" alternative of this century. First conceived in 1913, but not adopted in any form by a U.S. state until Missouri voted for it in 1940, merit selection, one observer remarked, "did not immediately sweep the country." This is an understatement: The next state to follow Missouri was Alaska in 1956, and this was after New Mexico only mustered 37.1% of its voters in a failed bid to adopt the reform. Over the next several decades, at least ten different states failed to get more than 50% of its voters to support "merit selection" when it appeared on the ballot. So merit selection will make a change.