Should there be judicial performance evaluation for federal judges? Campaign finance limits for state judges?
Most states have commissions which evaluate the performance of state judges. Would it be a good idea to institute similar performance review of federal judges? For judicial elections, are campaign contribution/spending ceilings constitutional? What about bans on candidates personally soliciting contributions? There are the topics of a symposium issue of the Denver University law review, including a foreword by Justice O'Connor. Comments on these topics are very welcome--but only after the commenter has read at least one of the articles in the symposium.
I also think that there is no perfect solution, including doing nothing.
I would point out that not all states permanently bar felons from voting, so there is some mitigation.
I also would go much further on that issue. I think felons should not be prohibited from voting unless they are convicted of violating election laws. I see no reason to prohibit somebody from voting who played internet poker, possessed crack cocaine, or even violated some law that really should be a crime. The numbers of such would-be voters are tiny, relatively speaking, and unlikely to influence any election outcome even if they voted as a bloc.
But prohibition from voting, and from contributing, for feloniously violating an election law has a quality of justice that is distinct and recognizable -- if you can't play honest, then you can't play at all.
I think the difference is you're entitled to a neutral judge, but not a neutral Congressman or Senator. You're not going to get a neutral judge when he just got elected with a $1 million campaign contribution from the guy on the other side of your lawsuit or when your cause is unpopular but an election is close at hand.
Personally I don't think state court judges should be elected in the first place. The role of a judge is to apply the law, regardless of the popular will and that is fundamentally inconsistent with a popularly elected position. If judges are getting out of hand the appoint different judges. I could also live with a system of appointment by the governor, ratification by the legislature followed by suitably structured retention elections.
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Oh, I imagine judges will find a reason.
Personally I don't think state court judges should be elected in the first place. The role of a judge is to apply the law, regardless of the popular will and that is fundamentally inconsistent with a popularly elected position. If judges are getting out of hand the appoint different judges. I could also live with a system of appointment by the governor, ratification by the legislature followed by suitably structured retention elections.
I'd like to see one of these "neutral" judges you talk about. That aside, I live in a state with an elected judiciary and do see that the system leads to a great deal of abuse. Something involving appointments and retention elections appears to work better in other states from what I can tell. Heck, maybe we can even aspire to, I don't know, requiring that people wanting to be judges demonstrate mastery of certain job skills, as in the competitive examinations in France. See this story ("He still recalls the four-day written test he had to pass in 1984 to enter the 27-month training program at the École Nationale de la Magistrature, the elite academy in Bordeaux that trains judges in France. “It gives you nightmares for years afterwards,” Judge Baissus said of the test, which is open to people who already have a law degree, and the oral examinations that followed it. In some years, as few as 5 percent of the applicants survive.")
That doesn't mean I think it's a good idea. Campaign finance laws have been regularly used to silence speech that should be a major part, such as an editorial section of a gun here or a a writer there. As the last election demonstrated quiet adequately, the laws have no noteworthy effect on a sufficiently motivated bad guy, and that's on a federal stage.
It's just too difficult to make a law that only blocks illegitimate funding without giving a trigger-happy politician-turned-DA the ability to make life miserable for someone who dared speak their mind.
Has anyone considered the opposite - requiring all campaign contributions to be made via TBD mechanism X to which it's impossible to prove that one has contributed?
This is an attempt to address legitimate free speech concerns while making it more difficult for politicians to discern who, among the many who claim to have bribed them, actually did (and to what extent:-).