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South Carolina judges often lack formal training in the law

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Re: South Carolina judges often lack formal training in the law

#101

Post by beagle3 »

t-writescode wrote: post #76
beagle3 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why elected rather than hired? It’s supposed to be a mostly scientific job with no agenda.

Prestige of being an elected office might draw more candidates to an otherwise undesirable job

It might also draw candidates who are better at running a campaign than at doing the work - in fact, it is most likely.

For almost all jobs, the common way of doing that is improve compensation and/or working conditions, and I see no reason a coroner should be different.

Re: South Carolina judges often lack formal training in the law

#102

Post by Balgair »

beagle3 wrote: post #67
Balgair wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, with coroners it's more out of necessity than anything. One of the counties next to mine has few coroners and it's something of a problem, as you can imagine. We recently had a friend die and the coroner's report is still not complete, three weeks later. We still don't know what the cause of death is, and as it's suspected to to be a suicide, it's not been a fun time waiting for the results to come out. A…

But why elected rather than hired? It’s supposed to be a mostly scientific job with no agenda.

Because it is difficult to get people that are so well trained to work in that county, yet the work needs to be done. Many counties require that a coroner be a licensed MD with training/experience in the coroner's office. These costs necessitate a high salary to pay off such educational investments and also due to supply and demand. That particular county is very poor and there is little to attract such caliber of people outside of money. Money that largely does not exist. So, one solution is to take anyone that will volunteer for the job. One way to sugarcoat this is to elect the coroner and make it seem like 'the people' have taken this risk upon themselves. Sure, many elected coroners are well trained and very good at their jobs. But those people are not the issue. Having massively undertrained people do this job is glaringly stupid on just so many levels, but what other option exists? The job market has spoken.

Re: South Carolina judges often lack formal training in the law

#103

Post by clairity »

scottlocklin wrote: post #94

>Their ranks include a Greenville lawyer appointed to the bench after siphoning thousands of dollars from accounts he managed; Yeah, OK, so they lead off with a guy who is actually a lawyer and did shady things. I'll give another example: 3 (elected) judges with law degrees who got into a brawl involving pistols at a white castle: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/14/779339897/3-indiana-judges-su... Here's another one: htt…

i don't agree with everything you said, but i do find it peculiar that lawyers are paid to make things worse (that is, get in the middle of arguments and escalate them). the more they escalate, the more they get paid. it seems like the worst kind of misaligned incentive.

Re: South Carolina judges often lack formal training in the law

#104

Post by tssva »

erentz wrote: post #56
alkonaut wrote: post #47

Are there many places that have elected judges? Why not require law degrees? It’s not like “elected” must mean “can’t require qualifications”?

It’s one of the stranger things about the US. Electing not just judges but also coroners and sheriffs and prosecutors.

Neither judges or coroners are elected in all states. Prosecutors are almost everywhere.

Sheriff's are elected but in many places are not the chief local law enforcement officer. In many places there is a police force which is led by an appointed police chief. In this situation the sheriff's office is usually limited to courthouse security and serving summons.

The original thought behind electing judges was that they are an equal branch of government which provides a check on the executive and legislative branches so having them appointed by the branches they are suppose to provide a check against makes no sense.

Also this article is about appointed and not elected judges.

Re: South Carolina judges often lack formal training in the law

#105

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

tssva wrote: post #104
erentz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s one of the stranger things about the US. Electing not just judges but also coroners and sheriffs and prosecutors.

Neither judges or coroners are elected in all states. Prosecutors are almost everywhere. Sheriff's are elected but in many places are not the chief local law enforcement officer. In many places there is a police force which is led by an appointed police chief. In this situation the sheriff's office is usually limited to courthouse security and serving summons. The original thought behind electing judges was that they…

More often than not, the Sheriff is the highest lawman in the county. Police chiefs work for metros. Like we have the NYPD, but there are also the Kings County Sheriff

Re: South Carolina judges often lack formal training in the law

#106

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

mnm1 wrote: post #100

How is this different than being judged by a drunk king based on his whims? It's not at all. So what happened to rule by law? How does such a system exist? How does it have supporters? This is perplexing. Sure justice is not valued at all in American culture but do south Carolinians not care at all about justice or having a civil society? It is beyond appalling to give stupid idiots (and there's no kinder way to desc…

All of your questions can be answered by the fact that South Carolina today and historically has been an extremely authoritarian state.

Re: South Carolina judges often lack formal training in the law

#107

Post by chongli »

roenxi wrote: post #96
michaelmrose wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want medical practice dispensed by the median doctor not the median patient. The median voter already sits on juries.

But the only similarity between a judge and a doctor is they both traditionally require degrees. If we accept that a judge doesn't need a degree then there is no comparison to a doctor. Ie, that is probably a form of circular reasoning. Degrees might be a reasonable proxy for general intelligence which is nice to have in a judge, but so is popular support. We already let any fool off the street write the law, they sh…

they should also be qualified to interpret the law

The problem with this is that our system is built on literally centuries of case law, in addition to all the legislation. Fools off the street don't know any of that stuff. Are we going to wait around while they spend weeks doing the research for every case?

We already let any fool off the street write the law

Foolish legislators often have their laws struck down for being unconstitutional. If we're going to let fools also be judges, then the inmates are running the asylum and we might as well not have a constitution at all.

Re: South Carolina judges often lack formal training in the law

#108

Post by credit_guy »

roenxi wrote: post #92
alkonaut wrote: post #47

Are there many places that have elected judges? Why not require law degrees? It’s not like “elected” must mean “can’t require qualifications”?

At heart, if the law is so complicated that only a trained professional can interpret it then it is unreasonable to ask people to follow the law. The people vote for the law so it isn't actually that obvious why their voice should then be abstracted away and filtered out from enforcing and interpreting the law. I am certainly more comfortable formally restricting positions of power to the over-educated elite; althoug…

I like your argument. I'll offer a different view, but I want to emphasize upfront that I'm not disagreeing with you.

American football has many rules. Tens of millions of people follow it, and if asked, most will tell you that they know the rules. But, being a game with more than 100 years of history, it accrued plenty of obscure rules that come up infrequently. Referees are expected to know all these rules, and react in a split of a second to uphold the rules.

A few years ago there was a labor dispute between the NFL and the referees, and it resulted in substitute referees for a few weeks. I think most people remember that period as a period of great frustration. It's very likely the substitutes knew the rules too, but not having the experience and the proper training/reflexes, the way they upheld the rules was a bit lacking.

Football players are too familiar with the rules, are expected to follow them, and they generally do. But if you try to ask a player to be a referee, he will probably suck just as much as one of those substitutes.

Re: South Carolina judges often lack formal training in the law

#109

Post by beagle3 »

Balgair wrote: post #102
beagle3 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why elected rather than hired? It’s supposed to be a mostly scientific job with no agenda.

Because it is difficult to get people that are so well trained to work in that county, yet the work needs to be done. Many counties require that a coroner be a licensed MD with training/experience in the coroner's office. These costs necessitate a high salary to pay off such educational investments and also due to supply and demand. That particular county is very poor and there is little to attract such caliber of pe…

Same things can be said about practically any professional job. If the job is required, it should pay market salary, as it does in essentially every other profession.

Why not elect system administrators? Everything you mention is true of them in many places as well.

Re: South Carolina judges often lack formal training in the law

#110

Post by masonic »

01100011 wrote: post #69

This is common in CA too, apparently. When I was getting a divorce, a lawyer I consulted with gave me the background on the judge handling my case. Apparently she was appointed by the governor to appease a particular voting block and as thanks for her activism work for that group. She knew nothing about family law but was given the job regardless. That situation is apparently quite common in family court since there…

When Governor Brown appointed Rose Bird to be Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court, she had never been a judge at any level -- not even municipal, or traffic court.
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