The LuLc edition #4,162, November 13th, 2019

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY

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My late Buddy L.A. Tarone and I would have huge arguments about Merit Selection of Judges. He’s be happy to know that regarding State races, I might be coming around to his thinking. Here’s a great article from the Times Shamrock Editorial Board concerning this issue.

2 MILLION-PLUS REASONS FOR MERIT SELECTION

Justice, broadly, and the law specifically require judges to be apolitical. Yet Pennsylvanians just elected two appellate judges in a partisan election, in which the four candidates spent at least $2 million solicited from entities that regularly have matters before the courts.
Democrat Dan McCaffrey of Philadelphia and Republican Megan McCarthy King of Chester County won the two seats. Democrat Amanda Green-Hawkins of Allegheny County finished third, followed by Republican Christylee Peck of Cumberland County.
As of Oct. 31, the candidates had raised more than $2 million for the race — the Democrats, about $1.3 million and the Republicans about $700,000.
In each case most of the money came from narrow interests, which almost always is the case in appellate elections.
The Democrats largely were supported by labor unions and trial lawyers, including $160,000 that McCaffrey received from Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Philadelphia.
Republican candidates received most of their money in large donations from financial industry interests and others.
After shaking the trees in a partisan election, the winning candidates now are required, magically, to become nonpartisan and everyone is supposed to pretend that the big donors gave in the cause of justice rather than self-interest.
There is a better way. Instead of electing appellate judges and requiring candidates to raise money from narrow interests, Pennsylvania should switch to a system of merit selection and gubernatorial appointment with senatorial confirmation.
Such a system would not be perfect because there is no way to completely eliminate politics from the process. But it would remove judicial candidates from directly engaging in the very political conduct from which they are precluded once on the bench.
State lawmakers have launched several false starts in recent years to change the system. They should follow through beginning early next year so that voters would have the chance to approve a constitutional amendment as soon as 2021.