IN THE WAKE of Tuesday's voter-ID decision, conservative groups threatened to campaign against Supreme Court justices who face retention elections in 2013, based solely on their involvement in the case.
Judges must be free to make decisions based on the facts and the law rather than political considerations and popular will. While judges must be accountable to the people, threatening non-retention for specific decisions undermines judges' ability to do their jobs effectively.
Retention is a tool to evaluate the performance of judges over the course of their terms, not to bully them into deciding a case in a particular way or as punishment for particular decisions. Judges' roles are to act as fair and impartial arbiters.
