worry, on 03 October 2016 - 08:37 PM, said:
Luckily it's still the first week of the month, so I haven't exhausted my 10 free articles or whatever. Anyway, the gist of it is that yes indeed, being subject to elections affects the behavior of judges, predominantly by making them harsher in criminal matters and less likely to risk their necks on the frontiers of social justice (like gay rights) than non-elected counterparts. In addition -- in case that alone might not seem like a causal link -- it also seems that the closer one is to the election, the more this harshness increases (it might still be worth reading the article, which is more eloquent about this than I am).
So while I get HD's point about the hierarchy of courts, I wouldn't discount the toll on people's lives that judicial elections cause even in low level courts.
Oh for sure. Electing judges is a crazy practice. But from what I understood of HD's post, federal judges are not elected but appointed.