The founders of this country in our constitution tried to create a federal judicial system that would be free from politics.  In today’s world, the federal judiciary has been subverted by the professional politicians into another political system.  When a major case is under review, the first thing political commentators mention is who appointed that judge to the federal bench.  This is done to identify how the case may be adjudicated based on the presiding judge’s political agenda.  Typically those appointed by a Republican president would be more conservative and those appointed by a Democratic president would be more liberal.  I believe the general idea is that conservative judges tend to believe in a literal interpretation of the words in the constitution and the liberal judges do not literally interpret those words but think that they are complying with what they think the writers of the constitution would do today.  This latter type of adjudication has been considered by many to be legislating from the bench.  My opinion is that no judge is smart enough to know what future the founders wanted over 200 years ago.

For the state and local jurisdictions, the judges are typically elected.  These judges are normally identified by political party and the conservative/liberal labels listed above usually apply.  It is interesting to note as recently as 50 years ago, a good number of Democrats were considered to be conservative.

I have a problem with any judge who bases his or her decision on politics instead of what is right, wrong, case law or constitutional.  When wrong decisions are made, they can have serious consequences for everybody.  To remedy this, I propose a constitutional amendment that requires all federal judges be elected, limited to one ten year term and prohibited for life from working for any organization doing business with the federal, state or local government after completing their ten year term.  If a judge is going to have a political agenda, then that judge must be elected.  A former federal judge should be allowed to use his or her law degree and work for a law firm as long as that firm complies with the business prohibition listed above.  More changes and restrictions are described in my book.

What is extremely frustrating is that when a law is passed or a judicial case is finally settled–and most people consider it the wrong decision–they cannot do anything to change it.    When a politician or judge commits a crime, they can be indicted, tried and convicted, but there is no constitutional remedy to remove them from office other than resignation or impeachment.  Typically the constitution stipulates impeachment to remove someone from office, but politicians rarely use this.  This means that someone who has committed an unlawful act as serious as murder could remain in office until his term expires.  This is wrong and there must be another remedy.

The remedy I am proposing is a constitutional amendment that allows the registered voters in every jurisdiction to recall any elected or appointed government official including the members of Congress, the President, the Vice President and all federal judges including those on the Supreme Court.  Currently the voters must wait until the next election to vote out their elected representative and these representatives rely on the voters’ short memory to stay in office.  The recall option returns to the people the power to control what their government does to them prior to the next election.

Let us remember that a representative type of government was chosen by the founders because at that time it took weeks to travel long distances by horse or other means.  It is sheer folly to consider that we should have a pure democracy where everyone votes on every issue, so that is not the solution.  My suggestion is that any government official should be removed from office when in a recall election a majority vote of the registered voters in that jurisdiction vote to remove that person.

To initiate this recall election would take a petition signed by 10% of the registered voters in that jurisdiction.  To vote to repeal any law passed, judicial decision or regulation issued would also require a petition signed by 10% of the registered voters in that jurisdiction to place that item on a ballot.

The politicians and political pundits will scream that recall elections are a huge waste of taxpayer money, but then what would you expect them to say when their government cushion is in jeopardy. In my opinion, it will only take a few recall elections for all government officials to recognize that when a recall petition has been started, they need to fix the problem as soon as possible or they may be looking for new employment.  Once again, the most important thing to remember is that a recall election puts the power to control what their government does back into the hands of the people.