Should judges be elected or appointed?

Wanted: better judgment, fewer crowd-pleasers and lickspittles
Nov 20th 2008
The Economist

Should judges be elected or appointed? In the case of international courts, this age-old conundrum has a new twist

BARACK OBAMA wasn’t the only person selected by American voters this month. They also cast ballots for thousands of state-court judges, after expensive, rancorous campaigns. No other nation in the world chooses judges by this stirringly democratic method, as Sandra Day O’Connor—the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court—has noted. In her view, that is because most countries know “you’re not going to get fair and impartial judges that way.”...