> It is precisely the process of electing those charged with
> administering the law on a local level which is most objectionable.
> Democracy is undermined by any system which politicises the actual
> administration of justice, this is inimical to the rule of law, which
> is in turn the essential foundation of political democracy.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "administering."
> Democracy is ideally about democratically determining what the law will
> be, on the understanding that the law will then be administered
> impartially. (Representative democracy falls short of the ideal in that
> it only permits citizens to democratically elect the people who will
> make the laws, rather than being able to make the laws directly.)
Well, if your view is that only "direct democracy" is really democracy, you're a lot more of a purist than I am. Where in the modern world is direct democracy operative?
> The problem with electing administrators though is the elected
> administrators of the law (judges, police etc in the US system) can no
> longer be impartial. They are subject to political pressure. The law
> will not be administered fairly, the elected police and judges must get
> and retain the support of a majority (and only a majority) in order to
> retain their position.
I wonder where you get your information about the U.S. system. Some jurisdictions have elected judges, some do not. There is a lot of controversy about judicial elections where they are held -- some argue as you do that this is a bad system. But I'm not aware of any evidence that the jurisdictions with elected judges manifest any more corruption or less corruption than the ones without them. Perhaps the lawyers on the list can express their opinions.
Police in this country are not elected. They are hired by city, country, state, etc., governments, which are run by elected officials.
> This is cancerous, undermining democracy. I wasn't merely being
> rhetorical. I genuinely believe that Americans don't understand this,
> don't even understand the basics of democracy. Maybe they were world
> leaders a few hundred years ago, but they don't seem to have kept up
> with the pace over the last 300 years, are still wedded to their
> primitive vision of democracy.
Primitive because representative?
> That early system had lots of bugs, the rest of the world has been
> gradually de-bugging it,
In what ways? Where is direct democracy operating, I ask again?
> but the US is still stuck with an early unstable version
In what sense is it "unstable"?
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org ________________________________ How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy. -- Nietzsche