Response to Gregg
Has the nomination process become too political? This week a nominee suggested by the President was being scrutinized by the senate committee. Senators who were not of the President’s party question the nominee about her religious beliefs. Assuming the religion is fairly mainstream is this appropriate?
response to Bradley
In our current justice system, there are multiple ways a lawyer can be moved to the bench and into a judgeship. Different methods can be seen for choosing judges in federal courts as well as state courts.
The first method of judge selection is Executive appointments. This method is mostly seen in selecting judges for federal courts (Fradella, Neubauer 2015). Typically, the President will look for a lawyer to nominate for the vacancy by consulting with senators and the American Bar Association to determine who is most qualified(Fradella, Neubauer 2015). After someone is chosen, the senate will confirm or deny the selection(Fradella, Neubauer 2015). This method of selection can be difficult because members of both political parties have to be in agreeance with the selection. Also, this selection process can seem unfair because selections could be made based upon political agendas and who the president feels will help carry out their interests.
The second method of selection is the election of judges. This method is usually seen in selecting judges for smaller state courts. This type of selection ensures that the community has a say in who they believe is most fit to run the local courtrooms. These elections are usually nonpartisan, but it is usually quite obvious which parties are supporting any given candidate(Fradella, Neubauer 2015). The issue with this method is that there is often low voter turn out, therefore many judges rarely get voted off of the bench(Fradella, Neubauer 2015).
The third method of determining who will take over a judge vacancy is merit selection. This is a sort of hybrid of the before mentioned methods. Nominees for judicial vacancies are selected by a nominating system of lawyers who make suggestions as to who should have the position to the Governor(Fradella, Neubauer 2015). If the governor accepts the suggestion from the committee, the person is appointed to the bench for a probationary period(Fradella, Neubauer 2015). Once the probationary period is over, the public has the option to vote on if that person should remain in the judgeship(Fradella, Neubauer 2015). I personally believe this is the best way to select judges. Nominations are made by lawyers and people that have practiced law for years, and then the public is able to see the nominees in action before deciding if they are right for the position or not.
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