Well, how else do you choose them? Appointed by other officials who are themselves elected? I’m not sure that that’s all that much of an improvement.
Here in North Carolina we currently have a Democratic governor and a Republican lt. governor. The latter has been making a career of undermining state policies, and doing things like comparing homosexual to cow manure.
The American federal system, despite some flaws, at least ensures (usually) minimal competence. Recall the case where a nominee withdrew his nomination when he couldn’t answer first year level procedural law questions from a senator…
In Canada, as I understand (IANAL) the government appoints judges from lists provided by the bar associations. I presume the more senior members of the bar association are aware of who displays the basic competence and temperament to be a judge, since they are the ones who may have to face him or her in future. At the very least, a law degree is a requirement. (I hope)
Yes, appointment, after an application process. At the federal level, in each province there is a committee chaired by a judge of the superior trial court or the court of appeal. It’s composed of reps from the Law Society (the regulatory body), the Canadian Bar Association (the general association of lawyers), reps from community groups, a provincial government rep, and maybe a few more.
An applicant has to fill out a detailed application form, outlining their entire profiessional career, acdemic degrees, publications, their participation in public interest groups, community groups, and so on. They have to have at least 10 years at the bar. A friend of mine who successfully applied said that the application took a month to do and was over 50 pages long when completed. It has to include references from individuals who support the candidate’s application to be appointed.
The committee then reviews it. They phone around to the references and can ask quite detailed questions (I have got a few of those reference calls over the years.) Then they sit down and discuss it. They conclude with a recommendation: qualified, highly qualified, not qualified. The recommendation is generally by consensus of the committee, to ensure the candidates are generally considered well-qualified for the position.
That recommendation then goes to the federarl Minister of Justice for more review. That process does include a political element, but the point of having the committee go first is that it weeds out people who might be politically connected but not considered qualified.
The Minister of Justice then makes recommendations to the full Cabinet, which decides whether or not to appoint.
The reason that I think this is a better system is that while there is a political element, a successful candidate doesn’t need to have links to the party structure to get appointed, unlike someone who has to get elected. It means that there isn’t a clearly partisan aspect to the appointment of judges, unlike the situation where judges are elected.
As well, there is a strong tradition in Canada that once appointed, a judge cuts off ties with previous activities: with the law firm, with businesses, with politics; anything that could be seen as raising a potential conflict. I’ve heard some judges say that their life is similar to that of a monk.
Overall, we don’t have judges identified by the party which appointed them, unlike in the States, or the party that helped to get them elected. By and large, I couldn’t tell you the former political affiliation of most judges in my province, before they were appointed to the Bench, even though I live in a small province with a small bar. The whole point of the system is to have non-partisan judges. That extensive application and review process helps to ensure that.
And, since we don’t have primaries, which can generate a public record of partisan affiliation, politics just isn’t as big a part of public life as it seems to be in the US. If you only vote once every four years, with out any declaration of political affiliation in a primary, partisan affiliation doesn’t seem so important. At least, that’s the impression I’ve gathered over the years.
We elect Supreme Court judges here in Oregon (and I agree it’s not the best way to choose them), but they are technically nonpartisan positions. There’s no party that helps them get elected. I thought this was the rule among states that elect judges, but a check with Ballotpedia says otherwise:
Not just felons. It actually says “or other crime”.
So theoretically, a state could deny voting to people convicted of misdemeanors, like even traffic crimes.
Simple answer for the OP. Congress did not have the backbone to enforce this clause. The could have denied the Southern states their full representation in the House but they refused to for political reasons.