judgesonmerit.org

John Baer, columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, greets the day after election day with this question: “Time to end electing judges?”  Answering his own question, Baer argues:

It has been long my contention that electing judges, especially statewide, is a joke. It strikes me even more so today. Pennsylvanians are filling six appellate judgeships this year. Yesterday’s ballot carried 22 candidates. I mean, come on.

First of all, it’s a crapshoot. Nobody’s heard of these people. So ballot position, geography (the ballot lists where candidates are from) and gender usually determine outcome. In other words, luck.

Then, Baer moves on to the money problem:

Also, judicial races are unseemly. Campaigns are funded by lawyers who later appear before the judges they help elect. So even apart from the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey (or elephant) aspect of the process, electing judges begs for politics to influence justice.

Just the possibility that it will is enough to diminish faith in our courts.

Baer advocates for Pennsylvania to make a change and remove itself from the handful of states that elect all judges in partisan elections.  We agree with him and hope that Pennsylvanians will ultimately get to decide for themselves whether to find a better way to pick appellate court judges.

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