The bare-knuckle, politicized State Supreme Court race that just shattered national spending records and obliterated traditional judicial norms has raised anew the question of whether justices should be elected the same way as partisan Republicans and Democrats. Alternatives in use in other states include appointments and independent commissions.
“Let the governor pick the judges, and you can have the confirmation process in the legislature,” said Brian Fitzpatrick, a Vanderbilt Law School professor who has studied the partisan leanings of state judges, while discussing the options before the election. “This does a good job of reflecting the preferences of the public over time without all of the negative atmospherics that we get with elections.”
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Robert VerBruggen is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
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