Page:The recall of the judiciary in California. A summary of reasons against recalling judges at popular elections (IA recallofjudiciar00denm).pdf/8

 selected by the boss or the interests he represented. (Statutes 1911, ch. 398.)

10. Because none of the progressive governments of modern times having a non-partisan judiciary—such as Switzerland, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, nations that have had for twenty years the reform legislation we are just initiating—have ever suggested the recall of the judiciary at a popular election.

11. Because for the first time in the history of the state we have strong and independent legislators, elected after a direct primary and free from the control of the convention bosses. Such a tribunal could give the question of recall an expert hearing and arrive at a fair and practical result. It is not hampered by any of the technicalities of an impeachment proceeding. It may remove on a joint resolution receiving a two-thirds vote, a smaller proportion than is required for a jury verdict in an ordinary civil case.

If the question becomes one for a popular election, the legislature will feel no responsibility. Just as the last legislature ignored charges of a most damaging nature against certain members of our courts because it felt that in all likelihood they would be decided at a recall election to take place this fall, thus doing the accused judges a gross injustice if the charges were false, or the people a gross injustice if they were true.

12. Because the measure is entirely out of harmony with that other constitutional amendment passed by the same legislators, talking from the people the right to elect the members of the most powerful judicial tribunal in the state—a tribunal whose single adjudication affects the common man in more ways than a hundred Supreme Court decisions—the Railroad Commission. Not only is the election of the members of this judicial tribunal taken from the people and its members made appointive by the governor, but they are not included in the provisions of the recall amendment and cannot be removed by the legislature by joint resolution, as are the judges.

On the plea of making the judges of the Supreme Court free from the Southern Pacific Railroad, we are asked to elect them by popular vote and subject them to a recall at a popular election. On the plea of making the railroad commission—which is the court in whose adjudications the Southern Pacific is now chiefly interested—free from that corporation, we are asked in the same breath to take from the people the right to elect them and to deny to the people the