• Accountability: Elections make judicial officers more democratically accountable. Elected judges are likely to be more in tune with public opinion. • Transparency: Judicial elections are more competitive, open and fair than most appointment procedures. Disadvantages of judicial elections: • Lack of professionalism: Ordinary voters do not have enough information to pick the best judges. They may not appreciate the professional qualities required for a judge, and judicial candidates cannot voice their opinions like candidates for political office (it would be improper for a candidate judge to pander to the electorate’s baser instincts by promising to hang all murderers and rapists, or to penalise the rich). • Political influence: Elected judges will be tempted to give judgments that will ensure their re-election; this is the obverse side of accountability. • Corruption and bias: Although the election of judges does not inherently require political partisanship, there is a danger that elected judges become too closely aligned to political parties or individuals who contributed to their election campaigns. The fact that few countries have chosen to have a system of elected judges is very telling. If electing judges was a self-evidently superior system, one would expect it to be in much greater use, but very few countries have such a system. Judges and magistrates are usually appointed, subject to safeguards to ensure their independence, by the Executive or the Legislative branch, or by both branches. System 2: Appointing members of the judiciary If judges and magistrates are to be appointed, the questions arise: who should appoint them? What procedures should be followed? Appointment by whom? Usually, the appointment of judges is, at least formally, made by the head of State. In the case of magistrates and other junior judicial officers the appointment may be made by other authorities. In Zimbabwe magistrates were previously appointed by the Public Service Commission because they were part of the Public Service; now they are part of the Judicial Service and appointed by the JSC. There seems no reason to change this position: under the new constitution senior judicial officers should continue to be formally appointed by the head of State, while junior officers should be appointed by the JSC or whatever other body is created to oversee the judiciary. What needs to be changed is the pre-appointment procedures for selecting appointees (see above) and procedures for appointment. Pre-appointment procedures Little or no formal process In Canada and Australia, judges are appointed by the head of State (the GovernorGeneral) acting on the advice of the Cabinet which is conveyed to him or her through the Prime Minister. In Canada an advisory committee is formed whenever a vacancy occurs on the Supreme Court bench, and this allows for greater consultation though it does not fundamentally alter the largely informal process. In India judges of the Supreme Court are appointed by the President in consultation with the Supreme Court, and appointments are generally made on the basis of 58