Judicial Selection System Analysis

The judicial selection systems in the United States are different all over the country. All fifty states have one of the basic patterns of selecting judges. There are partisan elections, nonpartisan elections, appointments, and appointments with retention election. Partisan elections, like the system we have in Texas currently works by each candidate having to run under a party affiliation. In a partisan election candidates first run in a primary election and it also incorporates straight-party voting. The good thing about partisan elections is that they allow people of that state some control by being able to have a say on how the judiciary should be set up. By citizens being able to link the candidate to a party, it helps in the decision …show more content…
Straight-party voting is completely prevented so the judicial ballot is separated from the rest. A run-off election is used if not even one candidate gets fifty percent of the election vote. Non-partisan elections allow citizens the same amount of participation in the judicial selection just like partisan elections. Citizens are able to choose candidate based of their own qualifications and background without being pulled by one party over the other just for having similar opinions. Party affiliation should be irrelevant for ethical reasons, because being a democrat as opposed to being a republican should have no role in judicial decision-making processes since decisions are supposed to be made for overall ethical reasons over personal opinions and viewpoints. This process would also help prevent qualified judges from being voted out of office for only reasons based of what party he or she belongs to. Non-partisan elections still have campaign finance, but all the contributions are easily traced and not received from specific parties. The bad thing is that nonpartisan elections might make candidates more dependent on the money they need to receive because they would not have as much support by eliminating party contributions and would have to try twice as hard to get voters able to distinguish candidates from others. Without being able to use party affiliation as a way of …show more content…
The governor is most likely to select appointees from a list proposed by a commission set to study the qualifications of potential candidates or dependently select them with legislative consent. The good thing about using the appointment system is that it removes the money that needs to be raised for a campaign. The bad part is judges can rule whatever they want without caring about becoming unpopular and suffering by losing votes or money raised for the election coming up next. Eliminating the contribution process would rid of the most unpopular part of the judicial selection system. The appointment system are also set up to make sure no one person decides who will get to be a judge. The bad thing about this process is that it doesn’t let the people have any control over the judiciary process. The bad part of the governor being able to make the appointment is that the governor might select a person based on who has the most similar political beliefs, which is unfair. What would be fair is if a nomination commission was made for the governor to only be able to select someone from the most qualified candidates without being able to tell which party a candidate belongs