When people think of a good judge they typically think of somebody who is fair, not bias and has some sort of experience. However, in today’s society, particularly in the United States, our judicial selection methods are not made to select judges on their ability to reason well and rule impartially (Carter and Burke, 6). On top of that, judges have no actual training before they become part of the judiciary. The only training they receive is in school when they are studying the law. Sometimes when they pursue an apprenticeship with a judge they also get a little bit more experience or insight into a judge’s job. In addition to judicial selection methods, at the federal level, the president and senate get to appoint seats to judges, in which they will have for life. In my opinion, I think this selection method is good to some extent because I trust that the president and senate have good judgment when it comes to picking judges that will be independent, fair, and accountable. At the state level, electing judges varies from state to state. In …show more content…
For instance, I believe that the federal selection system should not allow judges to have the seat for life. Once a judge reaches the retirement age of 65 they should have to step down. This is because after a certain point of serving as a judge, people start to lose interest or they tend not to care as much. When their age is also put into this situation they tend to not know what is going on. They lose the ability to focus and retain what is happening in a case. I also believe that people wanting to become a judge should have to as a requirement shadow a judge simply to gain experience on how to handle different cases. They must learn how to be a fair mediator when it comes to cases because if not then they will have a two against one situation, which is not good for a judge to be
In fact the Supreme Court of Illinois established the Commission on Professionalism to promote among lawyers and judge of Illinois principles of integrity, professionalism and civility: to foster commitment to the elimination of bias and divisiveness within the legal and judicial system; and to ensure that those systems provide equitable, effective and efficient resolution of problems and disputes for the people of Illinois. (Rule 799(a). Then going out in the real world seeing it happen, first hand. All I can say is I have been an apart of this great Commission for seven year and we have a lot of work to
Government Institutions in Texas Many people believe the Texas Judicial Branch needs refurbishing for the 21st century. However, the Texas Judicial Branch operates efficiently now because of the way Texas has set up its Judicial Branch and court system. The reason for this is because Texas has structured layers of courts and those layers of courts allow cases ideal time to be heard, which works efficiently and adequately for the court system.
First, to decrease the impact of implicit bias Kang suggests that his readers expose themselves to counter association in order to counter the stenotype with vicarious exposure. He suggests that in order to break the link we should alter the decision-making of judges and jurors. Judges should doubt their objectivity and begin learning more about unconscious thought processes; this would lead judges to be more skeptical about their own objectivity. We should scientifically educate judges with knowledge about implicit social cognition and judges should undergo early training and take IAT or other measures of implicit bias. Furthermore, jury selection and composition should be improved significantly according to Kang.
A judge must meet many requirements before he/ she is able to judge in court. A judge must have a law degree, a Juris Doctorate, and a numerous amount of other tests and jobs before he/she becomes a judge. Comparing the requirements of a juror and judge, a judge is more qualified to make a fair
A judge should be the only one able to decide a person’s fate because they use fact over feelings. For
Where the U.S. tends to do well with the preservation of the Social Contract and our Natural Rights, there are evident holes in the upholding of the Rule of Law. The largest of these holes is judicial bias. As described in the UCONN School of Law’s website, libguides.law.uconn.edu, “although judges are supposed to be impartial, as they promise in their oath… they are human and do harbor implicit biases influenced by their identity and experiences.” The school explains that, since judges use more intuition “than deliberative judging,” their implicit biases are applied to cases. Several times, such as in the case of Justin Bieber’s dropped 2014 DUI case (CNN.com), celebrities and other prominent figures have had their charges eased or even dropped through bias, whereas in the case of a regular citizen, the charges would have been the status quo.
Our legal system allows judges to make important decisions on their own, which is a huge responsibility, and if it falls into the wrong hands, there could be severe
A fair and unbiased court system is necessary for the legal system. The role of the court is to correct any injustice, not to compound it. When prejudice and corruption leak into the courts, what recourse do we have for eradicating them from society? Our judges must be stalwarts of integrity because the power to move our country forward or hold our country back often lies in their hands. Judge Persky had the power to bring justice to a victim, to help her and her family move forward.
This shows that term limits in the Supreme Court became more important. For example, if they have more mature members, they would understand the law, and would understand the politics and their decisions on the society. Mr. Ingraham stated
The Texas Constitution has three branches of government, the legislative branch, the executive branch and the judicial branch. Every branch is responsible for certain duties that make this state run smoothly. If I could change one thing about each of the three branches, what would it be and why? The legislative branch is the branch that is in charge of making the laws, and it is by law that government define crime, establish the basis of civil suits, determine what will be taxed and who will pay how much in taxes, and set up government programs and the agencies that administer them.
Aaron Persky, the judge in charge Brock Allen Turner’s rape case, should receive the consequences for giving the perpetrator a lenient sentence that was viewed as unfavorable to the public eye; but rather than have him forcefully removed, the judge should resign as a prosecutor for making a decision unworthy of a prosecutor. Instead of immediately losing his job for an unfair verdict, other factors should contribute to the severity of his punishment. However, it would be more favorable for Persky to relinquish his position as a judge than have his job taken away from him. It is shown through Turner’s case that Persky is likely to be an unqualified judge because his sentence for Turner was unbefitting of a legal prosecutor. His actions had caused
The appointment of judges has become clearly political. It is not uncommon to hear of candidates making statements with regards to contested political issues as well as the use of partisan language. According to (Bannon, 10) “For neutral arbiters, this heightened political temperature risks exacerbating pressures to decide cases based on political loyalty or expediency, rather than on their understanding of the law.” The selection of judges through popular election therefore suffers serious flaws since the electorate tend to base their decisions on charm instead of serious determinants. The results can be that the person elected as a judge turns out to be one who falls short of the glory of this office in terms of experience, legal training and education.
To begin with, the problem with having the people elect their judges is that the citizens know next to nothing about who they are voting for. Of course, it is important the people have a say in the decision-making, but the fact of the matter is that not everyone is an expert in government. Candidates have no problem in persuading the people that the other candidate is evil and corrupted and not suitable to serve. Furthermore, it is difficult to learn how well a judge preforms his or her job once they are put into office. Why?
The main draw to merit selection is the commissions, which “minimize political influence by eliminating the need for candidates to raise funds, advertise, and make campaign promises, all of which can compromise judicial independence” (AJS, 2010, p. 1). Unfortunately, the commissions are the main drawback as well because many people think it is easily politically influenced. New York is a good example to analyze which one of these ideals is true since it changed from partisan election to merit selection in its highest courts, the court of appeals (Becker and Reddick, 2003, p. 25). Remember, merit selection most commonly uses retention elections to retain judges in office, but something unique about New York’s system is they do not use retention elections, which have been shown to be politically influenced like partisan elections (Reid, 1999, p. 68 and 69), subject to change with public opinion (Canes-Wrone, Clark, and Park, 2010, p. 229) , and have a low turnover rate (Carbon and Berkson, 1980, Abstract), like most states with merit selection of some kind. Retention elections have the main purpose of trying
This may cause a judge to render a decision based on obligation instead of holding true to their beliefs. This pressure is not easily felt as intensely by appointed judges, especially those with lengthy terms. In considering the equity of the pros and cons it is my opinion that the existing system in place works best. Every system is flawed.