Should the electorate in a republic be able to
remove Supreme Court justices due to their past decisions on particular cases?
Can this basis be distinguished from removing a justice for judicial
incompetence? One thing is clear: the general public does not have the
technical expertise to perform a “supervisor’s evaluation” on a judge.
Obviously, anyone can see that someone who skips work on a regular basis is not
fit for the job, but this is different than evaluating a job by the technical
criteria of the profession. Distinguishing between a particular decision and
general judicial approach, for example, is more difficult. Moreover, it can be
difficult to balance the rights of popular sovereignty (i.e., rule by the
people) against the rule of law without respect to majority opinion.
The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012.
The full essay is at "Ideology Twisting Legal Reasoning."
