The Selection of Judges in Chicago, and the Rôle of the Local Bar Therein
In: American political science review, Band 30, Heft 2, S. 315-323
ISSN: 1537-5943
For many years, the organized Bar has sought to guide the process of judicial selection. Its greatest activity has been in metropolitan communities where the choice is nominally by vote of the people. Such participation by a quasi-public group in a democratic procedure raises several pertinent questions. For example, what effect will it probably have on methods of selection now in force? Is such activity likely to become an accepted feature of our political life? Is such participation to be regarded as in the public interest? Is it a specific corrective that the body politic has developed to counterbalance too much democracy in judicial selection?To shed some light on these and related questions, the writer (as a graduate student at the University of Chicago) made a study of judicial selection in Chicago from 1870 to 1933, particular attention being given to the rôle of the Chicago Bar Association in the process.