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The ABA Endorses Merit Selection of Federal Judges - WSJ.com
I don’t often find myself agreeing with the WSJ’s opinions, but on the the issue of merit selection of judges, I’m in their camp.  On paper, the idea of selecting judges based on merit makes perfect sense.  The tricky part comes when you have to pick the people who make the decisions about who deserves promotion to the bench.  The Missouri plan (used in Missouri and adopted by other states), has a bipartisan commision that sends a slate of acceptable names to the governor, who then chooses one from the list.  The ABA has just endorsed a similar plan for federal appointments.  In their plan, the two Senators from the state where the appointment would take place would select a commision that would put together a slate of candidates.  The president would then have to choose his nominee from that slate.  Putting aside the constitutional questions this raises, I still find major flaws with this plan.  My main concern is that we are removing accountability from elected officials.  This commision plan would likely still allow interested parties to influence the outcome, but would give all the politicians involved cover in case the public was dissatisfied with their selection.  We need more accountability in government, not less.  Consequently, we need out elected officials to be making decisions in plain sight so that voters can take those actions into account on election day.

Posted by on 15 August 2008 at 1:33 PM