Political Partisanship

Political partisanship and an ever growing divide between the two major parties in the political landscape are becoming an increasingly popular topic of discussion. This partisanship continues to create more political gridlock in Congress, an increased level of animosity between the two parties, and impact other areas of political study that change American society. Another issue that has been on the minds of a lot people revolves more around Judicial Partisanship. Federal and State courts across the United States find their judges through varying manners of appointments and elections, and in many cases, these elections are partisan, which requires these judges to declare where they stand politically before they can do their job to uphold
Georgia was the first to decide to elect judges instead of just appointing them in 1789 and in the mid 1800’s a majority of states that use elections now switched. Currently 39 of the 50 United States have some form of electoral system for selecting their judges and of those 39, 13 are completely nonpartisan and 7 additional states have some partisan and some nonpartisan elections. The other 19 are completely partisan and the last 11 states use appointments instead of elections, like the Supreme and federal courts. However, some research suggests that these nonpartisan elections are going to become less prevalent across America in the coming years. Roy Schotland’s article in 2003 titled “To the Endangered Species List, Add: Nonpartisan Judicial Elections” discusses the coming about of partisan and nonpartisan elections and then moves on to talk about how legislation from Congress as well as a the political culture in the Legislature are going to continue making nonpartisan elections more and more difficult to use in general, and more particularly in the judicial side of things. He also discusses the pros and cons of partisan elections. His major pro says that “party labels are "cues" that may inform voters of the candidate's general judicial philosophy, and party membership brings some element of accountability.” As for the cons he says that
This is important because while the judicial branch is supposed to uphold the law though judicial neutrality, they also play a big role in policy making. In Robert Dahl’s article, “Decision Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker” back in 1957, he discussed this topic in-depth, explaining that, particularly the Supreme Court, has the ability to change legislation or influence Congress’s decision, even in the face of countering a Majority Rule. Brown v Board of Education’s unanimous 9-0 ruling in 1954 is a prime example of this where the judges, many of whom had been appointed by much more conservative Presidents changed public policy regarding segregation in the schools, but through and unanimous vote, also changed the ideology, at least temporarily, of some of the judges. Bernard Schwartz’s article “Chief Justice Earl Warren: Super Chief in Action.” Talks about how the judicial session came to an end before a formal vote was cast, and the vote was 5-4 in favor of desegregation but Chief Justice Vinson, was not ready to overturn Plessy v Ferguson. He died in between the two sessions and Justice Warren was able to talk the 3 remaining dissenters into changing their vote because of the nature of the legislation and his leadership in general. So while partisanship plays a big