the_dunk_tank

Yeah. The checks and balances they support are what's anti-democratic. As James Madison wrote, and as @[email protected] has posted before:

In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.

As everyone here knows, I am supremely stupid but I'll try to address this to my knowledge

What I mean is, being a judge (at least in the current state of things) is something that requires a lot of technical knowledge, and this should be attested through some kind of examination, at the very least. I think the same of many other kinds of government officials, as well.

This is actually pretty common among Communist Party organizational theory. Direct Democracy isn't always the best, but neither is endless beaurocracy, thus a balance must be reached. This is where the concept of the Mass Line and Democratic Centralism in practice coalesce, with the Mass Line maintaining the will of the people while DemCent maintains unity in action. I doubt you'll see too much pushback here, it's quite similar to the CPC process to my knowledge.

To anyone who suggests that just electing judges is a good idea, I refer Roy Moore, and the Alabama Supreme Court.

Electing judges often goes very poorly. Then again, I'm not a fan of states in general, so maybe I'm biased.

I could see judges only being elected by people who have passed the bar exam for wherever their jurisdiction is going to be. In other words, judges are elected by lawyers and this acts as a sort of peer review.

This could end up causing other problems, though. It could result in a class of elites who are financially gatekeepers, yet have the power to implement legislation over the people. A lot of politicians are lawyers. Changes to the bar exam to make it easier or harder to become a lawyer in order to control who votes.

Something like having lawyers appoint judges but everyday citizens can veto or recall judges is another possibility.

I will +1 this. Where I live, judges are directly elected and a ton of them are corrupt, incompetent, or just plain bad.

Don't know what the alternative is. We still need democratic accountability, but man oh man there was one judge that the local bar association rated as not qualified and they still won like 60% of the vote.

You're good. You're actually in favor of more democracy (instant recall elections).

I can't find it now, and I could be wrong - all of the articles I get on Google are U.S. condemnations that don't have many details from the actual law - but I was under the impression that the reform would be something like Bolivia's system, where candidates come from a preapproved list to ensure that they're qualified.

Any system will have its drawbacks. So will this one. I've seen my share of nightmarish judicial elections in the U.S., too (like men's rights assholes running to be judges in family court), but, like, that's the thing about elections.

You could simply have passing an exam/test as a requirement to be a candidate in the election, in fact I'd say most influential positions would need that. For example, it should be required for the general secretary of a communist party to have good knowledge of theory, to ensure that we could have the candidates pass an exam.