Legal Times
August 9, 1999
The Soul of an Elected Judge
By Mark Kozlowski
The idea of electing judges has an unsettling aspect that is almost self-evident. As Justice John Paul Stevens once said to the American Bar Association, the practice “is comparable to allowing football fans to elect the referees.” The practice is even more problematic when, as in a recent case from Louisiana, the fans occupying the luxury boxes exert a highly disproportionate influence over the electoral results.
