The research reports reproduced here are the responsibility of the individual authors. The reports are offered in unedited form, as presented by their authors, with a view to make their findings available to a wide audience. All international standards on the independence of judiciary include some reference to the system of selection and retention of the judges.
Different countries utilize different systems for judicial appointments.
With some exceptions most countries give this function over to the executive which carries it out on either a uniform method for all the judges or according to a split-system, whereby the system of appointments in the higher courts differ from that in lower courts. Certain exception are the states of the United States from which some use partisan and non-partisan general elections for selection of judges. The major factor for preferring one or another system have mostly been the intent of achieving different balances between the independence of judiciary and their accountability. They found that there is a significant correlation between the sentences for felonies against the person and whether the people of the jurisdiction supported more liberal or more conservative political views - the more conservative population the longer sentences. In Estonia also different systems of selection of judges have been used.