This is bat-shit insane to me. The public elect the legislature who write the law... the judiciary implement it according to the legislation. They don't any personal opinions to it, that's not their job at all, they don't try to appeal to anyone, they just implement it. Is this not how it works in the US?
In the US could a town elect a judge who says they're going to convict everyone who's left-handed?
Which part is confusing? Can you answer this? "Are laws objective?" It seems you think so. But if they aren't, then someone needs to interpret them. This is essentially what lawyers are doing and the judge and jury decides what is right.
> they don't try to appeal to anyone, they just implement it. Is this not how it works in the US?
On paper, yes. In practice, no. Because again, laws aren't objective.
> In the US could a town elect a judge who says they're going to convict everyone who's left-handed?
Let's rephrase it.
> In the US could a town elect a judge who says they're going to convict everyone who's black?
Welcome to Jim Crow era. So the answer is clearly yes. Of course, conviction still relies on the jury and "jury nullification" exists in an effort to put these types of judges in check. This is why you're supposed to be judged by peers. Now there is interpretation of what peers means. Or what community is. Is this your neighbors? Or is this just people that live in the town? Are people in the Brooklyn your peers if you live in Queens? What about if you live in Mountain View? If you do a search you'll quickly find different answers from legal scholars as to what "jury of peers" means. I brought up the first and second amendments because these are frequently debated in the public domain (where judges/legal scholars are debating and we the public can see and listen in).
To me, the idea that laws are objective and not up for interpretation is "bat-shit insane." To do so would require perfect humans writing laws and last time I checked we didn't have any of those.
> If they're open to too much interpretation... send them back to the legislature to clarify.
Good idea. Now what do we do in the mean time with people that are being tried? Wait? How? Are they free or in jail? What's the default position?
Or do we just do our best (i.e. interpretation)?
> Well this seems like an indication to me that the system is not great.
Well... yeah... I don't think anyone has claimed it as such. If you have a better system I think a lot of people would be happy.
The issue is that there's lots of nuances involved. Even if we had Multivac judging it would still be difficult. People can't write code to be absolutely unambiguous and error proof. Code that takes into account every possible scenario. So I'm not sure why you would expect people that are in a more complex feature environment and using a less precise language would be able to perform better. This is really absurd, to me.
HUMANS ARE NOT PERFECT ROBOTS.
And I'm not sure why this is a controversial opinion.
> And I'm not sure why this is a controversial opinion.
I think by asking them to stand for election you make them less perfect and amplify their flaws, because they have to appeal to some sector. Do they appeal to left-wing extremes, or right-wing extremes? They can't easily target both. They can't just do what they think is right. They have to pander to some niche.
Plainly applying the law doesn't win votes.
The only people who will votes are those who promise to twist it to some extreme.
Great, something to actually discuss. I'll refer to a comment in another thread.
> The argument for election is so to reduce nepotism and cronyism.
So we come back to the question: "Which is better? Elected judges or appointed judges?"
> They can't just do what they think is right. They have to pander to some niche.
The question is about who's bias you are using to appoint the judge. Are you using the bias of current lawmakers/elites? Or are you using the bias of the public? You're right in that they have to pander to some niche. So which do you want?
I also mentioned in another thread that the point of democracy is to distribute power. Letting officials is a consolidation of power. Letting the public do it is distribution. There's advantages to both.
And honestly, looking at voter information guides, judges are mostly talking about their qualifications and how they are unbiased. In my last guide there were two judges. One said that he served the community well and cited some cases. The other said we need more transparency and that as a judge he would make rulings public to increase transparency of the law. Neither were really pandering to parties. Judges aren't allowed to be affiliated with parties. Neither of those judges were saying things like: "We're going to get those black people," (like Jim Crow era) "I'm a liberal and hold left-wing values," or even things like "I'm concerned with immigration law." The latter because it would be considered political. There are guidelines. These guidelines are to restrict their ability to make party appeals. At least pandering to the public is more transparent.
But when it comes down to it, it really is a question of who they are pandering to, not if they pander. There has to be some mechanism to appoint judges, and they will just pander to whoever is in charge of that.
Do you come from a country with common law or civil law? Common law is all about opinions and consideration of precedent. It grants a wide range of flexibility to judges.
Civil law is a lot less flexible. Most of the world uses civil law. Common law is I think exclusive to the former British colonies.
In the US could a town elect a judge who says they're going to convict everyone who's left-handed?