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For example, in every judicial election there are about a dozen candidates who are rated qualified by the Chicago Bar Association but unqualified by the Chicago Council of Lawyers. Obviously judicial evaluations are subjective since local bar associations never even come close to agreeing on them.
Also, the Chicago Council of Lawyers recently issued an evaluation of the Seventh Circuit (the local federal appellate court) in which every liberal judge was praised and every conservative judge was harshly criticized. Obviously the Council thinks that a liberal philosophy is necessary to be a qualified judge.
All this is why “merit selection” would be a cure worse than the disease. Letting the equivalent of bar associations choose judges would be like putting a fox in charge of a henhouse.
