Former judge: Alaska should keep politics out of judicial selection process
Published 7:32 pm Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Former Alaska judge Elaine Andrews believes the state has one of the best processes for selecting judges in the country — and she’d like to keep it that way.
“It is among the most transparent in the nation,” Andrews said during the March 1 meeting of the Chugiak-Eagle River Chamber of Commerce at the ER Ale House. “It is an amazing thing.”
Rather than having elected judges, Alaska’s system relies on a “merit based” system, Andrews explained. She explained that the authors of the Alaska Constitution didn’t want the judicial selection process to be overly political, so they installed a system in which the Alaska Judicial Council reviews and selects potential judges.
Contact Alaska Star editor Matt Tunseth at editor@alaskastar.com.
