5 - Selection Preliminaries

Summary

The three types of issues discussed in Chapter 5 involve a combination of interesting and routine issues. Probably the most interesting are those related to eligibility that dealt with formal qualifications: legal training, law license, practice time, residence, age, and gender. Several challenges to licensing requirements arose because the requirement was stated as “learned in the law,” which in turn raised questions as to whether that meant holding a law degree. The more interesting issues concerned age, particularly after the passage of the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA); importantly, the ADEA cases arose in states that appointed rather than elected judges, and the issue was whether judicial positions fell under the “policy position” exclusion. Age-related cases were brought on other grounds (e.g., equal protection) as well, but those cases failed. Term length cases generally concerned how long a judge appointed to fill a vacancy was to serve. Vacancy cases concerned the existence of a vacancy and how vacancies were to be filled.