Readers' Comments

1. October 31, 2012 09:16 PM

The selection of judges belongs with the citizens, to best serve the avoidance of an "imperial" judiciary.



Contested judicial elections, and not retention elections, best control that drift towards imperialism.



It commands a fair amount of judicial hubris for the judiciary to be promoting anything else.

— Don Evanson

2. October 30, 2012 08:35 PM

I'm sorry, but this is a LOT like the pot calling the kettle black ...and I use this racially insensitive and politically incorrect turn of phrase intentionally.

That's because justices across the nation have increasingly either become too engrossed in their own personal agendas/beliefs to reasonably equate matters before them with the Letters of the Law; OR have deprecated rational precedence in to silly and superfluous opinions and judgements.

In other words, the overall QUALITY of our nation's judges is on a serious decline.

It doesn't really help when the nation's President sets the stage for such negative partisan efforts by refusing to work across the aisle himself. Heck -why mince words,,Obama not only set this stage, he set it on FIRE. (Ex: Obamacare rammed thru Congress.)

We reap what we sow; and currently what's being collectively felt are the results of a poorly sown judicial field.

— Justine F.

3. October 26, 2012 02:50 PM

Amen Darren Mckinney. Remember the apolitical threat of FDR to pack the SCOTUS.

— Tom

4. October 26, 2012 12:49 PM

When, since Marbury v. Madison, has politics ever been successfully kept outside the courthouse? For at least many decades, the plaintiffs' bar exercised primary, if not exclusive, influence over judicial elections and nominations. But now that corporate defendants and their political allies have more recently worked to counter that influence, suddenly judges and other purported "nonpartisans" see the impartiality of our courts at "profound risk." Please.

— Darren McKinney, American Tort Reform Association, Washington, D.C.

5. October 26, 2012 12:42 PM

Is this a news story, or merely an editorial opinion?
The judicial elitists want nothing to do with messy democratic political choices of the occupants of the judicial branches of government. They argue that the quality of justice is better when it is doled out by individuals appointed to their positions for life by a small elite group of--politicians! They assume that the people are too craven or just too ignorant to choose wise and just judges on their own.
The truth is that lifetime appointees to the bench provide no better quality of decision-making than individuals who have to face re-elections. Lifetime tenure creates a judiciary that is disconnected from and that places itself high above the mere peons (both parties and attorneys) whose cases come before them. The infection of robe-itis quickly takes hold in such individuals because there is nothing to counter-balance the inflation of ego that arises with them as they "ascend" to the bench. If you need examples, just look at the federal judiciary. The logic and justice apparent in their decisions is certainly no higher, no more uniform, (and in many cases far below) that which is evident in elected state judges' decisions.

— Michael