We are united in the view that so long as judicial elections exist, they should be focused on competence and character, and not be allowed to degenerate into partisan struggles, or attacks on who originally appointed a judge, or how a judge ruled in a particular case, or on a judge’s age or ethnicity. Sadly, we see attacks of all these sorts being leveled against judges in several Bay Area counties this year.

Judicial independence is the bedrock of our system of justice. The founders of our country believed that judicial independence—including the separation of powers—was essential to the survival of a republic. In Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton, quoting Montesquieu, said, “‘There is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.’” Hamilton added: “In a government in which [the three branches] are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.”

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