Professor: It has been argued that all judges should be elected rather than appointed to their positions. But this is...

shunhe on July 9, 2020

Hi @kearann,

Thanks for the question! So let’s take a look at the stimulus. We’re told the conclusion of the argument right off the bat: it’s a bad idea to have judges be elected rather than appointed. Why? Well, if judges were elected, they’d have to raise campaign funds and so would probably get campaign contributions from special interests. But these contributions lead to conflicts of interests for politicians, and so probably for judges too. Diagramming this out, we have so far

Judges elected —> Raise campaign funds
Raise campaign funds —> Get campaign contributions
Get campaign contributions —> Conflicts of interests
Conclusion: ~Elect judges

We need something that links the idea of conflicts of interests with the idea of having judges election. And (E) gives us this. It tells us that no public office for which election campaigning would be likely to produce conflicts of interest should be changed from an appointed to an elected office. In other words, it tells us

Conflicts of interest —> ~Elect

And this allows us to justify the professor’s reasoning, since if judges being elected would produce conflicts of interest, and offices that would produce conflicts of interest shouldn’t be changed from appointed to elected, then judges shouldn’t be changed from appointed to elected.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.