One of the essential pillars to ensure an effective administration of justice is to have good judges, and this leads us, inexorably, to the eternal problem of the system or method of selecting them. Obviously, there are additional problems (the effective guarantee of independence of judges and magistrates) but perhaps the key piece of the system is precisely the choice of such professionals. To reflect on this matter, may be very useful to the reader two works very brief and easy to read: the first is because Jesus Gonzalez Perez, Master of Administrative Spanish, and is entitled just that, the selection of judges, and deals this problem by focusing exclusively on our legal-positive, the second, the very recent work of Serra Rosario Cristobal, entitled The selection of judges in the United States, and addresses the very varied and different ways or methods of selecting judges in North America. The American model (if one can speak of single model, because each state has its own selective) has chosen to literally flee from the selection by means of selective tests. At the federal level, the founding fathers chose to apply the high heeled mules system of checks and balances, so that is the president of the United States who selects the candidates, who must have the Advise and Consent Senate, so the potential candidate judge is subject to intense scrutiny over his career (and even his personal life) and the subject of a public proceeding before the Senate Judiciary Committee where it is subjected to a harsh and sometimes almost exhausting drip of questions on hot topics (abortion , federal-state relations, presidential prerogatives). By contrast, individual states have passed a judicial appointment by the governor or the legislative system which gives absolute priority to popular elections, so that the judge should respond in some way to the electorate. Thus, the judge's responsibility or accountability to be derived from the sovereign people. If the continental system, and more specifically the Spanish, has its shortcomings (lack of specialization of judges, access on the basis of a Monographic agenda, the "jump" from one jurisdiction to another order without further proceedings a brief three-week course that only serves) the U.S. has their own, especially when it puts the judge to regularly exceed the tessitura of the verdict of the polls, since their decisions will be influenced not by the law or justice, but rather so expect to get their citizens or by the lobbyists that have financed his campaign. This system (popular election) was subjected to a merciless criticism by John Grisham in his novel The appeal, which warned about the risks of this means of access, but, curiously, Grisham does not oppose alternative European model of oppositions but a more meritocratic system style that exists at the federal level in the U.S. (candidates with previous experience in the forum). I think nothing better to end this post with the words of Christopher Serra Rosario serving closing the first chapter of his interesting monograph "What, indeed, is common in any model that we are is the concern for the independence of the court: the absence of pressures on the way that judges must apply the law. In any democratic country there is a sustained interest remove the judge from any ideological influence or any other nature. One of the aspects that can influence it is, without doubt, the selection mode. As mentioned, Europe found their solution in the official judge and a promotion system that depends on the judiciary itself. United States has had to combining their independence with the idea of ​​accountability and that has been offering a multitude of solutions. What is the luckiest? It is difficult to know. " This entry was posted on May 4, 2011 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Spanish law, American law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. I start from the idea that judicial independence is a fallacy that we have always wanted to sell, either continental or Anglo-Saxon system eel. Judges are genetically and functionally conserved, as for that power in the service of capital letters. And that leaves frog, he was expelled from the race. No need to give examples. That said, I'm not at all a supporter of the extreme specialization of the judges. I think fighting a magistrate, at the beginning of his career, makes them better judges and expands their vision and their world and the law. And besides, as you said Ossorio y Gallardo