Mexico will amend its constitution this weekend to require all judges to be elected - eviltoast
  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    2 months ago

    You can get an incompetent evangelical ghoul voted into office. How do you think most county magistrates get voted in?

    • GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      2 months ago

      I’d rather an incompetent evangelical ghoul hold office than a competent one, but I don’t really see a point in your argument either way since those same places are getting evangelical ghouls appointed already. It’s not like there’s some enlightened progressive governor presiding over a clear majority of racewar enthusiasts or whatever. When there is a disjunction between a politician and their “constituents,” it is usually that the politician is more conservative than the people, but the people weren’t given someone more progressive to vote for. That’s the way the system works, it is fundamentally right-biased, with many checks on democratic power.

      • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        2 months ago

        The problem is that there is value in legal systems producing consistent results, especially when it comes to the kind of law both sides can spend millions on. Without consistency, the legal system backs up more than now as rulings are so wildly different that it makes sense to play the lottery with the courts. That causes cases to sit even longer and defense costs to raise higher for smaller participants.

        And if the system doesn’t perform well for those less advantaged, courts aren’t the best place to defend making this systematic change. At best, it acts as a relief valve to pushing actionable political change.

        • GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          2 months ago

          And if the system doesn’t perform well for those less advantaged, courts aren’t the best place to defend making this systematic change. At best, it acts as a relief valve to pushing actionable political change.

          Having a judge who won’t rule your relatively benign protest action to be “terrorism” seems like a good way of supporting systemic change.

          • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            2 months ago

            But that requires the public voting. In Mexico, it also requires planning out judicial succession as the executive branch has term limits and I expect this would get propagated to the judiciary.

            • GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              2 months ago

              You need judicial succession anyway, given that people die, but we have plenty of examples of the intuition you express there not holding up. After all, there are no term limits for US congress people despite the strict term limits for the President.

              Of course, I oppose term limits, I think they’re another guardrail for capital, since the capitalists don’t have a term limit on their wealth, which they can use to keep backing pliable puppets.