Thursday, July 17, 2008

O'Connor: Don't elect judges

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said Wednesday that she'd do away with electing judges and make prosecutors and defense lawyers interchangeable as a way of improving the U.S. justice system.

O'Connor, who has spent much of her 21 months in retirement defending judicial independence, said judges who must run in partisan elections risk being compromised by the growing amount of campaign cash they must raise.

"If I could wave a magic wand ... I would wave it to secure some kind of merit selection of judges across the country," O'Connor said at a conference on her majority opinion in Strickland v. Washington in 1984, which set standards for determining whether a lawyer is providing competent representation.

O'Connor's home state of Arizona switched from partisan elections of judges to an appointed system in the 1970s.



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