Posted on Monday, 03.26.12
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The Miami Herald EDITORIAL
A disorderly court
The Miami Herald Editorial The Miami Herald
OUR OPINION: Appointed judges bring more integrity to the bench
By The Miami Herald Editorial
Posted on Monday, 03.26.12
The latest travails of Miami-Dade County Court Judge Ana Maria Pando should kick-start a statewide conversation about elected vs. appointed judges. That likely won’t happen. But it should.
Studies have shown that appointed judges are far less likely to engage in or face allegations of corruption or ethical violations, boding well for judicial integrity.
Last week, Ms. Pando, one of two jurists presiding at the Hialeah branch courthouse, was charged by state judicial watchdogs with “lending the prestige of judicial office” to a friend. The friend happens to own several medical clinics that had appeared regularly before her in court.
The Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission, which investigates complaints about sitting judges, said that Ms. Pando wrote a letter, on official letterhead, to the state Division of Corporations on behalf of Mark Cereceda. His clinics, Florida Wellness, cater to people seeking out treatment for injuries sustained in car accidents. The Florida Wellness clinics also contributed $2,000 to Ms. Pando’s re-election campaign last year.
Ms. Pando’s case, of course, will work its way through the system. But whatever its resolution, that shouldn’t be a dead end for a serious look at how judges are elected to the state’s lower courts and county courts. A better model — merit selection and merit retention — has been in place at Florida’s appeals court and state Supreme Court levels for more than four decades. The system has worked well, though it has had to withstand the kind of political assaults that the approach was designed to keep out.
In the first part of the process, merit selection, a nonpartisan body, the Judicial Nominating Commission, vets applicants for open judgeships. Nine members sit on the JNC — five appointed by the governor, four by the Florida Bar. The applicants are judged on merit, experience, temparment, etc., then three names are sent the governor, who makes that final selection. A judge hoping to keep his or her seat at the end of the term has to go through merit retention. Voters get a say here. If yes, the judge remains seated. If no, the process starts again.
Floridians amended the state Constitution to add merit retention in the 1960s. This was prompted by an alarming number of scandals on the state Supreme Court — indictments, attempts to influence lower-court appellate rulings, private legal briefs submitted. In other words, a disorderly court. In addition, state Supreme Court judges were elected, raising money to secure the people’s vote. It was unseemly and lacked the level of integrity needed for a position in which judges have to make decisions based on the burden of proof, not the popular will.
Since merit retention was added to the mix, the appellate courts and the state Supreme Court have been virtually scandal free.
That’s something that can’t be said of those on the local level, to the detriment of the law and those subject to it.
But instead of seeing the merit — pun intended — of this approach, it has come under increasing assault. A bill in the just-ended legislative session would have given the governor the power to terminate any of his five appointees before the end of their terms, without cause.
This bill failed, fortunately, keeping partisanship from getting an even firmer grip on the judicial system. There have been attempts in the past, too, to remove the Florida Bar from the JNC process. That would harm a system that should be broadened to the lower courts, not curtailed.