Study Of Judicial Election In The American States

there is various mechanism of judicial selection in the world. Most countries adopt the mechanism of appointment by institutions. However, the selection of judges in the States of American presents another mechanism in the world, that is, appointment by society. The states in the USA have adopted gubernatorial appointment, legislative appointment, partisan election, nonpartisan election , merit selection ordinally in the history. And all these five methods of judicial selection still have been adopted in the USA today. Among the 50 states and 1 special district, there are 11 states adopting or partially adopting partisan election,20 states adopting or partially adopting nonpartisan election,24 states adopting merit selection. About 87% of all state judges must stand for election.The judge election was born along with the 19 century democratism of USA. Democratism requires the establishment of public accountability. Judicature should answer for the people by the means of judge election. The accountable judiciary required by democratism became the political-philosophy base of judge election. Accountable judiciary means that the judgment made by judges should accord with the public democratism.Judge election includes partisan election and nonpartisan election. Although they are quite different in the process, both of them include primary election, general election, and voting. Political party, interest group and Bar Association will be involved in the election and will affect the result of the election as well.But the purpose of involvement and the means of affecting election are various. Political party and interest group are focus on the benefit of themselves. They manage to help their own candidate to be a success, and what is more, Bar Association also stand by themselves, but since they are independent and neutral, they play the role of supervisor and manager.The debate about the judge election is heated, the pro and for are both reasonable. The judge election in the states of USA supply us with an example for analyzing appointment by society. Judge election can survive in America where has suitable politics, civilization and economy environment. There are advantages and disadvantages in social appointment and institute appointment.. Judge election may conflict with judicial independence, but the implement of auxiliary measures, to some extent ,will reduce the bad effect of judge election and make the good judicial environment possible.