With all the attention on the six seats open for the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas and the new county council the spots up for grabs on the state appellate courts have been overlooked.
The candidates are:
JUDGE OF THE COMMONWEALTH COURT
Vote for 1 for a 10 year term
Paul P. Panepinto (R)
Anne Covey (R)
Kathryn Boockvar (D)
Barbara Behrend Ernsberger (D)
JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT
Vote for 1 for a 10 year term
Vic Stabile (R)
Paula A. Patrick (R)
David N. Wecht (D)
To save my time I'm not providing links to their websites, Facebook, etc. You can google them if you are interested but I will bet that you are not that interested.
I don't pay much attention to the statewide Judge races because the candidates run on their bio's and promise to be tough on crime with an emphasis on locking up all the drug dealers. But then every politician promises to lock up all the druggies and we all know that policy has worked out well over the past 50 years. Their campaigns are financed by the lawyers that will appear before them but they assure us that that will not influence their rulings. What a bunch of hooey.
Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts make a good case for scrapping the present system and going with merit selection of Judges. Their blog JudgesOnMerit.org documents the problems with electing appellate Judges.
I'm willing to go further and go with merit selection for county judges. Do you think Michael Conahan could have survived a background check?
In the 2009 contest for PA Supreme Court Justice we elected Joan Orie Melvin who is now in a lot of hot water along with her sister despite the assurance from a local high ranking GOP operative that said "she is an honarable person."
There has to be a better way.
Hi, Gort, my name is K.O. Myers. I'm a legal fellow at Pennsylvanians For Modern Courts. We wanted to thank you for the links to our sites, and for your support of Merit Selection as an alternative to electing judges. We appreciate your perspective.
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