Importance Of Judicial Selection

Throughout the course of our nation’s history, there has been a debate about the best way to select judges. While most agree that judges should be impartial, objective, and nonpartisan, there is still much deliberation about the best way to achieve that. Judicial selection by descriptive representation, which is the idea that the court should mirror demographically its constituents in terms of things like race and gender, is the best way to ensure a competent, independent, and well-qualified judiciary. By reflecting the diverse population of the United States, judicial selection by descriptive representation would ensure a well-rounded group of justices that bring many different minds to each case, increase the public’s confidence in the court

First of all, one of the main reasons to have a court that reflects the characteristics of the people is to guarantee there is a varied group of people looking at each case. The more diverse the group of justices, the more diverse the minds, backgrounds, and experiences are that are looking at each case. This is important because the United States is made up of so many people from very different ways of life. The life of a white male who grew up in a mostly white suburb in the Deep South, for example, is much different than the life of an African-American woman who grew up in a poor city on the coast of California. However, the decisions made by the Supreme Courts are going to affect everyone from all different backgrounds. Therefore, it is important to make sure that judicial decisions are not going to have unequal impacts on

Many people argue that descriptive representation means the job could go to someone less qualified simply because of their gender or color of their skin; however, the job is already not based entirely on merit. In our increasingly partisan government, a judge’s political affiliations, party activity, and ideology are playing a bigger and bigger role in judicial selection. Descriptive representation can be a solution to this. By focusing the search on groups such as women or Latinos, political ideology becomes less of a factor because they are then searching for simply the most qualified candidate. Some argue that by focusing on group affiliation judicial selection, a more qualified candidate would be passed over. First, individual merit has never been the sole focus of judicial selection. Judges are often picked by presidents based on if they seemingly lean to the right or left in decisions. Furthermore, descriptive representation actually ensures that the people who are chosen for the job are the most qualified by focusing on their merits instead of ideology or political stances. To make sure no one could say the justice got a job they did not earn or deserve, only those who are highly capable and qualified for the job could actually be selected. Only the best of the best would be chosen because they would have to stand