Mexico is poised to amend its constitution this weekend to require all judges to be elected as part of a judicial overhaul championed by the outgoing president but slammed by critics as a blow to the country’s rule of law.
This is ideology. There’s no material mechanism to actually ensure judges are experts or have merit. They’re just picked by politicians, who themselves are selected democratically rather than by merit.
This just cuts out the middlemen. If the selection process is unable to select for merit, then it might as well be democratic.
The UK has an independent Judicial Appointments Commission.
Which can be overruled by an elected official but generally is directed to pick on merit and allowed to do so.
Allowing professionals to pick experts and only stepping in when there is a problem is much better to me than direct elections which quickly become partisan and obstructive to professional candidates.
All it takes is getting a few panel members with an ideological axe to grind and suddenly the selection process for judges and the JAC panel itself becomes politicized in that particular direction.
But furthermore, the very framework of law is political. You can’t actually non-politically adjudicate disputes or reviews or appointments or dismissals, there are always political underpinnings and ideological assumptions embedded within the process. The very fact that they currently “particularly welcome applications from ethnic minority candidates and Welsh speakers” is political, and acknowledges that it is political and ideological and not truly objective.
An attempt to be representative is not equal to being “political”.
It’s actually a strength of the system that minorities get some representation rather than being always voted into zero representatives. And they still have to pass the standards to be considered as experts in the field.
No system is perfect, but look at America. Small area elections for judges produce poor corrupt picks. Large area elections produce partisan fights with extremists campaigning against each other.
There’s no country which is a good advert for directly electing judges.
Well if that’s the meaning of "political you’re using then all judges are. That’s why I put it in quotes in my last reply, I assumed you meant partisan. Otherwise you’d have been making an irrelevant point.
Unfortunately the US has a storied history of elected local judges allowing lynchings, for example, while the appointed federal courts passed civil rights so I won’t be taking notes.
Of course the appointed judges and elected judges are now targeting women and minorities. So your appointment system is also broken.
The problematic politics of elected judges in the US come from its fucked electoral system. US elections, for most of its history, were undemocratic at their core… and they still aren’t very democratic tbh
But the worst judges, today, are appointed.
Your conception of politics being only partisan is very narrow; partisanship in liberal democracy is mostly just kayfabe.
This is ideology. There’s no material mechanism to actually ensure judges are experts or have merit. They’re just picked by politicians, who themselves are selected democratically rather than by merit.
This just cuts out the middlemen. If the selection process is unable to select for merit, then it might as well be democratic.
The UK has an independent Judicial Appointments Commission.
Which can be overruled by an elected official but generally is directed to pick on merit and allowed to do so.
Allowing professionals to pick experts and only stepping in when there is a problem is much better to me than direct elections which quickly become partisan and obstructive to professional candidates.
All it takes is getting a few panel members with an ideological axe to grind and suddenly the selection process for judges and the JAC panel itself becomes politicized in that particular direction.
But furthermore, the very framework of law is political. You can’t actually non-politically adjudicate disputes or reviews or appointments or dismissals, there are always political underpinnings and ideological assumptions embedded within the process. The very fact that they currently “particularly welcome applications from ethnic minority candidates and Welsh speakers” is political, and acknowledges that it is political and ideological and not truly objective.
Law isn’t math.
An attempt to be representative is not equal to being “political”.
It’s actually a strength of the system that minorities get some representation rather than being always voted into zero representatives. And they still have to pass the standards to be considered as experts in the field.
No system is perfect, but look at America. Small area elections for judges produce poor corrupt picks. Large area elections produce partisan fights with extremists campaigning against each other.
There’s no country which is a good advert for directly electing judges.
The concept of representation is political - and anti-representation would also be political. You can’t escape politics in law.
Where there’s power, there’s politics.
And the worst parts of the American system are the parts where judges are unelected, so that’s a pretty bad example lol
Well if that’s the meaning of "political you’re using then all judges are. That’s why I put it in quotes in my last reply, I assumed you meant partisan. Otherwise you’d have been making an irrelevant point.
Unfortunately the US has a storied history of elected local judges allowing lynchings, for example, while the appointed federal courts passed civil rights so I won’t be taking notes.
Of course the appointed judges and elected judges are now targeting women and minorities. So your appointment system is also broken.
Again, not taking notes.
The problematic politics of elected judges in the US come from its fucked electoral system. US elections, for most of its history, were undemocratic at their core… and they still aren’t very democratic tbh
But the worst judges, today, are appointed.
Your conception of politics being only partisan is very narrow; partisanship in liberal democracy is mostly just kayfabe.
So the problem with elected judges is the elections.
There are solutions to that. One of which is to appoint.
There are problems with appointed judges in America no doubt. Changes to appointments could definitely solve them. Elections most likely won’t.
Politics is inevitable and unavoidable. Your choice of sandwiches is ultimately political. Let alone judges.
Partisan politics is avoidable.
Avoid partisanship in the justice system and then you solve a lot of problems.
The problem with elected judges is undemocratic elections. Democracy fixes the problem.