Court Opinion

ID: 9858408
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:22:37.059432+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:54:08.861541
License: Public Domain

CRAVEN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I agree with my brothers that judges need not be elected, but if the state chooses to elect them, I think its election scheme must accord to the voters equal protection of the laws. Whether or not judges “make” law, see B. Cardozo, “Lecture III. The Method of Sociology, The Judge as a Legislator” in The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921), it is clear to me that the judicial branch of government is a branch of government. Superior Court Judges of North Carolina are elected by a two-step procedure. A nominee from a political party is selected by the voters of each judicial district. The voters of the entire state then elect the superior court judge for each judicial district from among the nominees selected by each district. The elected judge serves both the people who nominated him in his own district and the people of the state who had no voice in his nomination. For example, the people of Mecklenburg County are presently allowed to nominate four resident judges of the superior court in party primary. These judges, upon statewide election, rotate and hold court over all of the 25 counties of the Western Division of North Carolina, and occasionally may be sent into other divisions of the state. When they hold court in Buncombe and other counties they exercise judicial power over people who were denied participation in the primary nomination procedure. That the people of Buncombe have the theoretical right to vote against such nominees in the general election does not save the scheme, for the primary is an integral part of the elective machinery and procedure. See Terry v. Adams, 345 U.S. 461, 73 S.Ct. 809, 97 L.Ed. 1152 (1953); Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649, 64 S.Ct. 757, 88 L.Ed. 987 (1944). A voter is not only entitled to switch his party allegiance and vote for the nominee of another party, but is also entitled to participate in the selection of his own party nominee.
North Carolina voters are denied equal protection of the laws with respect to the election of all superior court judges except the superior court judge for whom they may vote in their own judicial district primary. For each superior court judge to be elected from each judicial district the statutory scheme creates two classes of voters: (1) those voters residing in the judicial district who may participate in the total election of that judge by voting first for the party nominee in the primary and then for the judge from among the nominees, if more than one, in the general election, and (2) those voters residing outside the district who may participate only partially in the election of that judge by voting in what is sometimes an unopposed general election.
*935The second group of voters suffers harm doubly from this classification:
(1) People residing outside a superior court judge’s district are subjected to the exercise of judicial power by an official whom they did not elect.
(2) Moreover, as the state recognizes, these people have an interest in the proper administration of their laws statewide, and have been effectively denied the franchise except for judges nominated by them in a given district.
That each voter can participate fully in the election of the superior court judge from his own district does not satisfy his admitted interest in choosing other superior court judges who will function throughout the state.
In summary, the statutory scheme for election of judges in North Carolina accords the right of nomination in a primary to some of the people with respect to some of the judges and denies it arbitrarily and capriciously to others. Such a scheme is a denial of equal protection of the laws and is condemned by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.