judgesonmerit.org

Merit Selection of appellate judges isn’t a partisan issue. Groups that care about good government and unbiased justice, from business groups like the Pennsylvania Business Council and the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association to civic groups like Common Cause and the American Civil Liberties Union, support Merit Selection as the best way to ensure a fair and impartial judiciary for all citizens.

Despite this consensus from a wide spectrum of viewpoints, critics continue to insist that the campaign to bring Merit Selection of appellate judges to Pennsylvania is politically motivated. Working through the democratic process to give Pennsylvania voters the chance to choose a method of judicial selection gets unfairly portrayed as an attempt to undermine democracy.

To get at the truth, let’s take a broader view of judicial selection. In the midst of this year’s bitterly contentious race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the Wisconsin State Journal wrote an editorial urging the state to replace partisan election of its high court justices with a Merit Selection system. This insightful examination of increasingly partisan, expensive judicial elections prompting calls for reform illuminates how Merit Selection safeguards the rights of citizens.

Judges — especially supreme court judges — are supposed to check the majority ’s power to trample on the minority ’s rights. Judges do that by remaining impartial and true to the law, rather than bending to the prevailing political winds. When judges are elected in big-money contests in which partisan sides back judges partial to their politics, the system of checks and balances is upset. That’s undemocratic.

Bringing Merit Selection to Pennsylvania’s appellate courts requires that the citizens of Pennsylvania vote for it. If that happens, we will gain a judicial selection system immune to the influence of campaign fundraising. The power of deep-pocket donors will be replaced with a system that provides justice free from the taint of campaign donations. We’ll have a fair, impartial judiciary, able to decide every case without concern for raising campaign funds.

What could be more democratic than that?

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