Replication data for: Comparing Judicial Selection Systems

To address this question, we need not create new rules out of whole cloth. For the world’s democracies have devised, in the form of formal constitutional provisions and laws, a number of responses to the query we propose—responses that the vast majority of American scholars have not contemplated.

In light of chronic complaints with the modes of appointment and retention of U.S. state and federal jurists, this void in our thinking is not just surprising; it is also unfortunate. For, before we weigh up the sorts of rules (much less the wholesale changes or even mere alterations in the existing rules that some scholars and policy makers have proposed) that might induce particular outcomes—be those outcomes a more distinguished judiciary, a more independent one, or both—ought we not consider the range of existing possibilities?