Electing Judges

The American habit of electing non-federal judges has always intuitively struck me as a bad-sounding idea. I think reverence for the founders often goes too far in this country, but their arguments in favor of a non-elected federal judiciary seemed sound. But does research back this up? Certainly the result Alex Tabbarok describes here doesn't sound like justice, though it does have a certain populist quality that perhaps some will deem appealing.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/05/electing-judges/45058/