Category: federal courts

Interdependence Classics: Deanelle Reece Tacha, Independence of the Judiciary for the Third Century

This is the first in a series of occasional posts, highlighting scholarship and writings on the relationship between the court system and its external environment.

Tenth Circuit Judge Deanelle Reece Tacha’s 1995 article, Independence of the Judiciary in the Third Century, offers a short and engaging summary of the dependency issues that the federal courts faced at the end of the twentieth century.  Much of her description and analysis is equally relevant today.

Judge Tacha notes from the outset that “[e]xamining the independence of the judiciary and perceptions about its erosion requires that one see the issue in both the institutional and the individual sense.”  It is natural, and in a sense traditional, to think of independence in terms of tenure protection. But while life tenure protects individual judges from the vagaries of the political climate, it does not protect the judiciary as a whole from resource-related strains.

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WSJ on ABA Vetting of Judicial Nominees

The Wall Street Journal posted a nice article this weekend on the role of the American bar Association in reviewing and rating federal judicial nominees.  (I was quoted, which was also nice!)  It gives a good summary of the ABA’s rating process and the history behind it.

The ABA ratings have had their share of controversy, and in an age where everything is increasingly politicized, we should not be surprised if controversy continues.  But the ABA’s overt avoidance of political/policy questions, and deliberate focus on the qualities everyone would expect of a good judge (appropriate demeanor, high level of competence, intelligence and legal skills, etc.) make it a worthwhile addition to the overall vetting process.  Nor is the ABA alone: similar criteria are used by state judicial nominating commissions across the country.

The ABA’s involvement also underscores an oddity of federal judicial selection: almost everyone gets a say in the timing and substance of judicial nominations except the courts themselves.  I’m hard pressed to think of another sizeable organization that is so constrained in hiring its core employees.

If you hit a subscription wall, a PDF of the article is here.