I’d rather have a bumbling judge who is trying to help people rather than a competent evangelical ghoul
The problem is that the judges often use their decisions to campaign instead of simply applying the law. So they might give an unpopular criminal defendant a harsher sentence to look tough on crime or even tilt a trial against an innocent defendant. Not that doesn’t happen with judges that are appointed by the executive, but it’s usually not as bad.
“usually not as bad” requires a citation, since we can point to lots of evidence of systemic injustice in sentencing as it is. example
What you are describing is a judge pursuing an agenda and/or having an unconscious bias, which is what we have already. That’s the thing I keep getting with objections to voting in judges, problems that we already have presented as though they only apply to elected judges, or problems that would be demonstrably less bad with popular input.
Via the Brennan Center. Elected judges are more punitive and more likely to rule against defendants.
You can get an incompetent evangelical ghoul voted into office. How do you think most county magistrates get voted in?
I’d rather an incompetent evangelical ghoul hold office than a competent one, but I don’t really see a point in your argument either way since those same places are getting evangelical ghouls appointed already. It’s not like there’s some enlightened progressive governor presiding over a clear majority of racewar enthusiasts or whatever. When there is a disjunction between a politician and their “constituents,” it is usually that the politician is more conservative than the people, but the people weren’t given someone more progressive to vote for. That’s the way the system works, it is fundamentally right-biased, with many checks on democratic power.
The problem is that there is value in legal systems producing consistent results, especially when it comes to the kind of law both sides can spend millions on. Without consistency, the legal system backs up more than now as rulings are so wildly different that it makes sense to play the lottery with the courts. That causes cases to sit even longer and defense costs to raise higher for smaller participants.
And if the system doesn’t perform well for those less advantaged, courts aren’t the best place to defend making this systematic change. At best, it acts as a relief valve to pushing actionable political change.
