Seth Barrett Tillman: My Post on CONLAWPROF: On Elected Judges and Elected Prosecutors
Posted by Jonathan on 26th August 2018 (All posts by Jonathan)
It strikes me that the complaint against judicial elections (as voiced on this listserv) is rooted in the absence of life tenure — not elections per se. You could have elections filling judicial vacancies — but with the candidates’ receiving life tenure. And you could have appointments by political authorities to fixed and limited judicial terms — with the possibility of reappointment. The threat to the rule of law (such as it is), lies with the prospective candidate for reelection/reappointment to judicial office biasing his/her decision for self-interested reasons. But that conflict of interest will appear whenever you have terms of limited duration with the possibility of reelection/reappointment. It is not elections per se that create the conflict.
This is an excellent point.
Posted in Academia, Deep Thoughts, Elections, Law, Politics, Tradeoffs | 3 Comments »
