judgesonmerit.org

CNN reported yesterday that retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a long-time advocate of merit-selection, has lent her name and her support to a project that will work to change the way state judges reach the bench. While many states already have some form of merit selection in place, others, including Pennsylvania, continue to elect their judges in contested partisan elections.

The O’Connor Judicial Selection Initiative, created by the Denver-based Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, hopes to change that by assisting state-level reform efforts. O’Connor expressed her concern that judicial elections lead to both a loss of judicial independence and a loss of public confidence in the court system:

Studies show that roughly 70 percent of the public believe judges are influenced by campaign contributions, and more than one quarter of judges agree.

This is alarming because the legitimacy of the judiciary rests entirely on its promise to be fair and impartial. A judge’s sole constituency should be the law. If the public loses faith in that impartiality, then there is no reason to prefer the judge’s interpretation of the law to the opinions of the real politicians representing the electorate.

Unlike other elected officials, a judge’s role is not to be responsive to the public. Judges have a duty to be impartial and to adhere to the rule of law, even if than means making unpopular decisions.

Judges themselves admit that impartiality may be compromised by the abundance of “cash in the courtroom”—the result of campaign contributions made by third parties to the judge’s campaign.

Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, who supports changing his state’s voter-based system, has also said that money needs to be taken out of the equation in order to maintain public confidence. This would mean a switch to merit selection. Hopefully, with insight and aid from the likes of O’Connor and Moyer, states will be encouraged to re-evaluate and reform the ways in which their judges are selected.

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