Popkey: Council Not Voters Should Choose Justices

Retiring Supreme Court Justices Gerald Schroeder and Linda Copple Trout are among Idaho’s most experienced and thoughtful jurists. They’re also class acts. Their early resignations help ensure the most vital aspect of our courts — independence. Schroeder, 67, and Trout, 55, are stepping aside to spare us a repeat of the ugly, partisan and expensive judicial campaigns of 2000 and 2002. Those kinds of battles erode confidence in judges as even-handed arbiters of fact and law. Their stepping down triggered a process that favors the qualities that make a fine judge — intellect, integrity, experience, guts. Those characteristics should come first, not the ability to raise campaign cash, speak in soundbites and politicize a job that demands impartiality — Dan Popkey /Idaho Statesman.

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Question: Who should choose Idaho’s Supreme Court justices — the Judicial Council or voters?