As the Trump administration and the U.S. Senate continue to fight over U.S. Attorney nominees, a number of U.S. Attorney’s Offices around the country have been thrown into chaos. The nation is seeing how our criminal justice system can suffer when the elected branches of government are at loggerheads.
Four years ago, in early 2022, some people in New Jersey were saying the same thing about judicial vacancies on our Superior Court. After a massive increase in discretionary retirements during the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic, judicial vacancies rose all the way from 12 in early 2018 to a high of 78 in May of 2022. Some observers in the bar claimed that the judicial appointment system was broken, and floated wholesale changes such as abolishing senatorial courtesy or even electing judges.
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