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Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

This position, like most city judges, is not elected. TFA makes this clear:

A few months after Judge Hayes’ suspension ended, his term as a municipal judge was set to expire. So, the Montgomery City Council took up the question of the judge’s future on March 6, 2018. On the agenda of its meeting: whether to reappoint Hayes to another four-year term.

Everyone on that city council knew, for years, what a terrible judge they had hired. This seems to undercut the idea that appointing judges is some sort of solution to the problem of injustice in USA.

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Both political appointments and elections are a bad idea. Both make the appointment of judges a political decision.

Yes I agree that judges should be selected randomly from the general population of people younger than 35 or older than 65. If that's not what you're thinking, please correct my misunderstanding...

Is there a third option though?

This is what's used in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Appointments_Commissi...

It had never occurred to me that any developed country would do anything other than this. Are there any that do?

A bit of a survey from the Venice Commission, some sort of gang of euro-judicial boffins:

https://www.icj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/CDL-AD2007_02...

As far as I know, for the lowest level of Dutch judges, it's a matter of having the right education, some non-court experience, an impeccable legal record and approval from a committee. Judges for the Dutch supreme courts (most countries have several) are appointed by a process involving the supreme court itself, as well as parliament and the government. There can occasionally be some politics involved, but not nearly on the scale as in the US.

That seems like a nation-level body? It seems unlikely we'd ever have something like that hiring judges for city-level posts in USA. Also JAC seems to recommend candidates after which action another (seemingly politically-appointed) entity decides whether they'll go on the ballot? I might be misreading?

I certainly hope we can improve our "judicial" system in USA, to make it more just, less tyrannical, less capricious, less totalitarian, less active, etc. Sometimes I wonder whether that's possible for a society that's happy to spend $750B/yr on killing machines and in fact has killed millions of innocents overseas over the last several decades. As Thucydides wrote, the tyranny that the Athenian empire imposed on others it eventually imposed on itself.

Think Canada uses something similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_appointments_in_Canad...

Lower level appointments go thru a provincial JAAC, while superior and above go thru a federal JAAC. After JAAC's shortlisting, the respective provincial or federal government or minister of justice decides.

I suppose there's always a way to stack the committee to get a biased shortlist to choose from, but the committees aren't all appointed by the government. Some are appointed by judges, law society, etc. In practice, it seems to work way better than just having a city council choose.

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