Law Commons^™

My purpose in this essay is to evaluate one of the alternative grounds suggested by Professor Geyh: that the elimination of judicial elections and limits on judicial candidates’ speech can be defended as means of "preserv[ing] public confidence in the courts." Such confidence is necessary, the argument goes, because the people would refuse to "acquiesce[] in the orderly administration of justice" if they believed that judges were deciding cases on the basis of their own preferences (or the electorate’s) rather than on the law.