An organization called Better Courts Now is seeking to unseat four San Diego judges and replace them with a religious slate of Christian judges. They view the current judges as ungodly and unbiblical. The group includes some of the same people who backed Proposition 8, the California initiative that took away the right of marriage from gay couples. According to one spokesman, "if we can take our judiciary, we can take our legislature and our executive branch."
Vote no on judges, legislators and executives who base their official decisions on their religion.
A. Should judges be elected or appointed?
ReplyDeleteB. Do you want your judge atheist or someone who is in fear of practicing their faith openly? If a candidate is open about his or her’s religion, he or she is going to be slammed for their faith, like Craig Candelore and the other Better Courts Now endorsed candidates.
What the media is telling us is: A judicial candidate should not mention his or her’s faith and the candidates should give the public the “silent treatment” that all the judges currently practice, keep their faith or lack of faith, out of the public's attention. OUR judges currently practice: secrecy/ lack of accountability/ zero transparency of the judicial system and yet no one is blogging this or outraged. No one is upset at the fact that judges are appointed in "backroom deal" and !
C. Right now nearly 80 % of your judges are appointed, AND no one know anything about them or the judges being run against. YET we are going to scrutinize the first candidates know want to be properly elected and not appointed as a judge. If America does not want people who are open about their faith then:
What kinds of values and characteristics do we want in a judge?
Do we want judges who worships themselves, satan or worship nothing at all? Is that what our current judges do? If not explain why our courts are in such bad shape then?
www.bettercourtsnow.com
would like to see an article on why the sitting judges asked for and accepted campaign contributions from large firms and attorneys, O and not to mention, even the City Attorney and District Attorney were there helping the judges get money? Sounds like a conflict of interest, well yes it is? Here is real news on the very problem: http://www.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/juris_prudence/9212/
ReplyDeleteI love how everyone keeps talking like the courts are in great shape, with the appointment of judges, and how these Christian men are going to destroy the impartiality of the courts. Well that just is not the case, the truth is our courts have been becoming more partial and bias through the years and many of our own government groups have done evaluations on this problem. Here are the results posted for you to see how bad it is:
A. Elkins Report: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/jc/tflists/elkins.htm
B. Trust and Confidence in the California Courts: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/reference/documents/4_37pubtrust1.pdf (see pages 17,27 &28)
C. Commission for Impartial Courts: Final Report 2009: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/jc/tflists/commimpart.htm (see pages 37, 38, 60, 74, 102-106)
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ReplyDelete(edited to correct grammatical and spelling mistakes)
ReplyDeleteAllancando (1857),
A. This is a good question and one that has been debated and tested nationally and internationally. Ultimately, I'm not certain either is better. The courts should be free of political influence so that they can focus on the law, but both systems inject an element of politics.
B. Being honestly open about their faith is different from using "faith" as a political tool. A judge who goes to church on Sunday (or temple on Saturday or mosque on Friday) is different from a judge who preaches from the bench. Judges may well use their moral and ethical beliefs but they should keep their religious beliefs to themselves.
Stating that, for example, all Americans no matter their color deserve the same rights because the Constitution says "any person" without qualification is different from saying that all Americans no matter their color deserve the same rights because we're all God's children. The first is strongly rooted in the laws and traditions of our [pluralistic] country. The second presumes too much—theism, monotheism, and, very often, implicit Christianity (and while we're there, very often Protestant Christianity). The first is a ruling that can apply to all citizens within the judge's jurisdiction. The second disenfranchises all non-Protestant, non-Christian, non-monotheistic, non-theistic citizens.
C. For elected judges, the reality is that the majority of people either don't vote for judges or vote at random. Some people may well educate themselves about the issues or about the candidates for elected office, but few take the time to even attempt to research the judges running and, when they attempt, often run up against a wall. Judges' positions on key legal issues, past rulings, and personalities are not tracked the way political candidates' are. Informed voting about judges may be better than appointment but informed voting does not happen. Uninformed voting cannot be better than appointment.
For appointed judges, the vetting process is much better—the political party in power at the time of appointment looks into who they want on the bench. They probably even take the time to talk directly to the potential judge (where are the judicial debates? most people don't even watch presidential debates!). Do they look at an unbiased list? Of course not: politicians on either side look at contributors to their campaign, outspoken members of their party, friends, or business partners. (Which is why voting for the politicians in the first place is so important.)
What is decidedly not beneficial is a group of religious zealots attempting to impose their religious viewpoint upon the court system. The courts are no place for religion; especially when the rights of people who are not that religion are at stake.
Allancando (1858),
ReplyDeleteRe: Campaign contributions. Do you support campaign finance reform such that all candidates should be limited to a certain amount of money and public money at that? If not, this cannot worry you except that the people contributing are not on your side of the political spectrum.
"everyone keeps talking like the courts are in great shape" I do not find this to be the case. Everyone I know knows that the courts are in trouble; they differ, however on what should be done (or what is possible) to change this. The state of the courts, however, is a kind of constant: people know how to work within the current system and change is hard. I agree with you that the courts could use change in a number of areas, but the overhaul will cause tremendous upheaval. We all need to know that in advance and be ready for the fallout (and weigh that fallout against the current state).