Opinion ID: 1230380
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Getting the Job of Being A Judge

Text: It is people who vote who ultimately give our court system its legitimacy as an independent branch of government, protective of the rights enshrined in our laws and Constitution. [1] When it comes to deciding who will get to hold the powerful job of being a judge (or justice, or magistrate), we have used popular elections in West Virginia for more than 125 years. This system has by all accounts served us well. [2] Unlike some states, we don't ordinarily hand out our judging jobs in West Virginia in a back-room swap, trade, or dealin the governor's office or in the Legislatureeven to highly qualified candidates. We require our judges, before they get the job and exercise power, to stand publicly for election, and to receive the direct approval of the people. When there is a vacancy between judicial elections, we make an exception. The governor selects the person who gets the job until the next election. Not surprisingly, when this appointment exception to judicial selection kicks in, the role of the electorate is diminished, and the role of the politicians is enhanced. [3] But there are some restrictions on who is eligible for such appointment to office. In the case of a gubernatorial appointment to a judge's job (or any other public job), our West Virginia Constitution and the United States Constitution, and the constitutions of almost all other statessay that legislators are ineligible for the jobif the job was created or the pay for the job was increased during the term that the appointment to the office is to be made. These constitutional limitations are Emoluments Clauses, or Legislative Ineligibility Clauses. See John F. O'Connor, The Emoluments Clause: An Anti-Federalist Intruder in a Federalist Constitution, 24 Hofstra L.Rev. 89, 91 n. 2 (1995). The legislative ineligibility clauses in our federal constitution and dozens of state constitutions absolutely bar legislators from eligibility for offices that were created or had the pay increased during the legislator's term. Most of these clauses make no exception whatsoever for popular election to such an office. Somehow the dissent loses sight of this elementary point. This strict ineligibility for legislators is not a diabolical invention of this Court, directed at Speaker Kiss. It is a central fixture of our American governmental system. For example, in 1793, George Washington had to withdraw his nomination of William Paterson to the United States Supreme Court because Paterson had been in the Senate when the office of Associate Justice was created. Id. at 105. I suppose that according to the dissent, President Washington was like Admiral Tojo! West Virginia (and about nine other states) have in their constitutions some sort of a popular election exception to the legislator ineligibility rule. Our state's popular election exception, Article VI, Section 15 of the West Virginia Constitution, is the constitutional clause that is at issue in the instant case. To summarize, then, here is how a person gets the job of judge or justice in West Virginia: (1) the general rule for deciding who gets the judging jobs in West Virginia is this: the people decide, through popular elections; (2) if there is a vacancy in a judicial office, there is an appointment exception to the rule that the people decide; (3) however, there is a constitutional rule that makes legislators ineligible to hold any job during a particular term during which they were involved with creating the job or improving the salary of the job; and (4) there is a popular election exception to this legislative ineligibility rule, so that such a legislator may hold an office during a term in which he was involved in creating the job or improving the salary of the job, if the people override the ineligibility through an election, even during the particular term.