This article outlines the history of the movement toward merit selection, analyzes various studies comparing merit systems to elective systems, and concludes that merit-selected judges appear to be more independent from partisan influences, less likely to reflect popular sentiment in their decisions, more diverse, and more ethical than their elected counterparts.
This article argues that four out of the five canons of judicial ethics aimed at constraining campaigning make it less likely for challengers to incumbents to win contested elections.
This article reports the results of a survey of candidates who ran in state supreme court elections in 2006 and suggests that candidates’ campaign organizations rely largely on volunteer labor rather than paid staff or consultants, and that parties and interest groups play a limited role in campaign organization.
This article analyzes the effects of different rules that restrict spending for judicial candidates in terms of their impact on both the cost of elections and their level of competition.
This article argues that judicial elections, in the manner they are currently conducted, involve risks to public confidence in state high courts; the author proposes measures to reduce such risks, including disqualification rules, expenditure limits, and extended term limits.
This essay argues that judicial terms of office should be long and non-renewable such that there are neither reelections nor reappointments, and that the initial selection of judges should be by election for high courts and by appointment for lower courts.
This article briefly summarizes and reviews “In Defense of Judicial Elections” by Chris W. Bonneau and Melinda Gann Hall.
This empirical study of partisan judicial elections in Texas in 1976 finds that the electorate lacks the information necessary to make an elective judicial selection system function properly, and concludes that for judicial elections to fulfill their democratic purpose, organizations should assume a more active role in informing the public about judicial candidates.
This article reviews the problems associated with judicial elections, including financing issues, unhealthy rhetoric, and the effect of judicial campaigns on public confidence, and argues that an appointive system is necessary for a truly independent judiciary.
This empirical study of nearly every judicial retention election in the United States from 1980 to 1990 concludes that a judge’s race or ethnicity does not play any significant part in how the judge fares during a retention election.