Just one or two coments.
[quote="Justice Soothsayer":25zdd2c3](2) I once applied for a judicial office in RL. The application process was far less cumbersome than what Ash has proposed. No essay exams were involved, no "marking of papers", just a reasonably short application form with an interview with the appointing authority. (Note: In my RL state, state judges are elected for a term of office, though vacancies are filled by an appointment by the governor until the next election; federal judges are appointed by the president with confirmation by a 2/3 vote of the Senate. Other federal judicial offices, such as Magistrates and Bankruptcy Judges -- and I was applying for one of those --- are picked by the lifetime federal judges with advice from a panel of lawyers and prominent citizens, and for the record, they picked the better candidate who wasn't me.) Of course, most of the selecting panel had experience with the candidates, or knew those who had experience with the candidates as attorneys, and we don't have similar experiences with our prospective judges. Though we do know those who have written on the forums, and from those writings I think Ashcroft and Beathan would both do creditable jobs as judges, as would many others. Rudy and Fernando come to mind as those who have demonstrated keen minds, even without my having any idea of what kind of legal experience they might have.[/quote:25zdd2c3]
Although I do not know the details of your judicial system, I rather doubt that just [i:25zdd2c3]anyone[/i:25zdd2c3] could have applied to be a judge, and the entire decision be based on a brief and informal process. No doubt, those who applied for judicial office would already have had to have had some sort of formal legal qualification (which, of course, would be far [i:25zdd2c3]more[/i:25zdd2c3] rigerous), and have demonstrated to the appointers over time (not necessarily as part of the formal appointment process itself) that he or she was a skilled lawyer. In other words, the formal appointment process itself would no doubt actually have been a culmination of a lengthy period of time, starting with the person's undergraduate degree, progressing to the legal qualification, and then the knowledge accumulated during practice, the totality of which would be far more lengthy and rigerous (one would hope) than what I propose here. The situation in relation to judges in England was very similar until recently (when the Judicial Appointments Commission was formed); in order to be, say, a High Court judge, one would simply have to be picked by the Lord Chancellor on the basis of a brief written application with a C. V., and perhaps a brief interview. But, to stand any chance at all of becoming a High Court judge, one would have to have been a practising barrister for probably near enough twenty years (with all the qualifications that that would entail), and, in addition, acheived a very great degree of distinction in one's profession.
Our situation here, of course, is markedly different. We are starting from cold, and, although I have some knowledge of some of the applicants, in the interests of impartiality (partly because one of the people interested in applying is a real-life friend of mine), I have created a system where the applications are strictly anonymised so that the qualification process is based only on the information contained in response to the questionairres. Clearly, one cannot tell who will and who will not be a good judge on the basis of a few brief answers: one must be rigerous. Indeed, there is a sense in which we have to be [i:25zdd2c3]more[/i:25zdd2c3] rigerous, in some respects at least, with our judicial applicants than some real-life judicial applicants (at least those in the very lower courts), since it takes a greater degree of inginuity and intellectual skill to carve out a coherent set of judicial precedents from nothing than it does to apply existing, long settled law.
It must also be borne in mind that, at least at present when we have only the one Court of Common Jurisdiction, the rights of appeal are very limited (only on the ground that the Court has acted outside its constitutional jurisdiction), and so there is no real oversight from more senior judges. The rigour with which we qualify judges must, therefore, be measured against the rigour with which real-world [i:25zdd2c3]higher[/i:25zdd2c3] court judges are selected (at least until we set up an inferior court), and not the more junior judges. We cannot be, for practical reasons, anything like as rigerous as applicants, for example, to the High Court bench in England, that require not only several rounds of interviews in addition to a written application, but effectively mandate a long (multi-decade) and highly distungished career at the Bar, but the limits on rigour should be only practical limits, and not principled ones, since principle points us to more, rather than less, rigour.
[quote:25zdd2c3](3) There is a regrettable tendency of those of us who hire folks for jobs to want to replicate ourselves. SL is a very diverse community, as is the CDS, and I don't see the proposed judicial selection plan as sufficiently respectful of that diversity. I also think the rigor of the process will discourage all but the most dedicated of prospective nominees -- but then again, that's probably the point.[/quote:25zdd2c3]
It is unclear what [i:25zdd2c3]sort[/i:25zdd2c3] of diversity that you mean. I do not think that it is a fair characterisation of my qualification criteria that it is not respectful of diversity, especially as you have not explained exactly what you mean by that. In constructing the application form, I have deliberately avoided asking questions about matters that are both controversial and on which I have a strong opinion. What other than that you could mean is, I am afraid, rather unclear. It must also be borne in mind that the choice of the legislature to delegate to the judiciary the power to qualify applicants for judicial office, and make that part of the consitution itself, means that the legislature should only afterwards seek to interfere in the process if there is a very serious problem indeed indicating that the whole system is in urgent need of reform, not merely because there is some level of disagreement with the sorts of qualifications required.
As to dedication, it is indeed the point that, if we are going to have people making binding decisions about things that substantially affect members of our community, and do that individually, requiring a certain level of dedication is a good, rather than a bad, thing. The only good reason not to require that dedication would be if it was not possible to find enough people that dedicated. So far, that has not proven to be the case: it is looking like we might well have more applicants for judicial office than places available, especially if we allow people to sit as part-time judges and also practise law (which is a rather good idea, suggested by Beathan and Publius).
[quote:25zdd2c3](4) All of the foregoing notwithstanding (how's that for a legal-sounding disclaimer?), I think there is something of a disconnect between two segments of our community. On the one hand, we have Ashcroft and his proposed judicial selection methods may be very useful for picking a SecondLife world-wide judiciary -- highly qualified (usually with legal experience) professionals who have been vetted through a series of diffcult hurdles, deciding significant commercial cases in robes in a virtual courtroom that echoes elements of RL systems. On the other hand, we have others (Publius? Fernando? others?) who would be happy with a tribal chieftain sitting on a stool in the middle of the Forum deciding the balance between citizens arguing over the placement of prims that overlap. In other words, are we picking judges to help rule (or provide a model for ruling) our virtual world, or just our little CDS corner of the virtual world?[/quote:25zdd2c3]
We cannot pretend to govern the whole of SecondLife, but that does not mean that we do not need highly skilled judges. The "skilled and complex" versus "unskilled and basic" debate does not turn on whether we seek to govern the whole of SecondLife or just our own (growing) nation. As indicated above, when passing the Judiciary Act that left the qualification requirements to the judiciary (remember, the argument that I had put forward in favour of leaving that requirement to the judiciary was that it was of paramount importance to ensure sufficient judicial skill), the legislature (rightly) enshrined in the constitution the principle that the existing judiciary should determine what suffices to qualify a person for judicial office. It would be wholly wrong for the legislature lightly to reverse that position almost immediately after it has come about. I am not suggesting that that is what you are seeking to do, but it is clear that there are some who would do it.
