What criteria should voters consider in electing judges?
In a report issued in 2003, the American Bar Association formulated eight enduring principles to guide the selection of judges. These are not recent principles, but reach back at least to 1780, when John Adams drafted the following statement in the Declaration of Rights of the Massachusetts Constitution: It is essential to the preservation of the rights of every individual, his life, liberty, property, and character, that there be an impartial interpretation of the laws, and administration of justice. It is the right of every citizen to be tried by judges as free, impartial and independent as the lot of humanity will admit.
