Ontario Premier Doug Ford lashed out Wednesday against “terrible, bleeding-heart” judges who he claimed are blocking the government’s agenda, musing that perhaps judges in Ontario should be elected so that they are more responsive to public sentiment.
Gods, had this conversation with a bunch of Americans recently. They were trying to defend Elected judges and I just can’t fathom why. Like why would I want someone who is less trained in the law adjudicating the process of the law? I would much rather have a system where you prove you understand and can carry out the code written into law by being selected by people who actually understand the function and process of the law otherwise lawyers are going to be able to pull all manner of fast ones and the judges won’t recognize it as perversions of justice.
Elected judges always run on a “tough on crime” platform which creates incentives to throw more people in jail, make police worse and that system never, ever de-escalates. Not everything is made fairer by letting the public vote. Whenever a specialized knowledge set is in play the public is more of a nuisance when they try and put their oar in because they wouldn’t understand enough to make an informed decision if they did nothing but study for a year. It would be like taking out a public vote on what medical surgerical proceedures for specific conditions should be the norm.
We need to collectively start understanding and championing the value of administrative branches of government, departments and agencies. Without experts in their fields being invested with reasonable powers our collective gooses will be cooked.
Also how many elected officials are actually good at their job? Why do we want more…?
It’s the case that the entire premise of popular elections is kind of flawed system. Actual leadership and technical aptitude and the ability to play to a crowd are not really the same skills at all but we treat them like they are. It is a way to select someone who will make a bunch of promises that give them popular directives… But they aren’t beholden to those promises at all.
Having a balance between groups which are hired and fired based on their technical ability to follow the directives and achieve the objectives set by elected bodies is crucial. That they persist through different governments means a continuity of service and the ability to commit to long term planning.
Honestly what most people don’t seem to get is that any actual improvement made by a government takes almost a decade to pay off. Half the time they are dissatisfied with “broken promises” it is that those initiatives haven’t had time to work because elections aren’t that far apart. There’s a certain amount of technical fleshing out, research before the fact, wrangling of contracts and trial and error in execution before anything does what it’s supposed to do which often means an elected party is praised or damned by the actions of their predecessors.
I know you just meant public servants and I agree, but at the same time I would like to see staff-elected people in most workplace leadership positions. I think it’s worth bringing up here that it would do a lot of good to have democracy and employee ownership within more organizations.