Hi team,

I am not from the US and I am just curious about how their system works.

I know that in the states (of the United States), judges are elected. To me, this seems like the wrong type of people could end up becoming judges as the key criteria would be likability rather than legal experience and skill.

I was wondering, do candidates for judge need to go through a vetting process first? For example, be highly regarding for their legal abilities by their colleagues?

I have seen some state judges on youtube and they appear extremely unprofessional and frankly completely separated from the law. I saw one judge in Mississippi sentence a woman to 18 years imprisonment without an obvious legal explanation. She basically read out a poem of what she thought the victims of the drink driving would have said and then said "in honour of Jane Doe, I sentence you to 20 years. In honour of John Doe, I sentence you to 20 years. Because the court believes your husband had a role to play in this, I reduce the sentences by 18 years to 20 years". There was no legal explanation as to why the judge began with 20 years to begin with. Not only that but I have never heard of "in honour of..." being a legitimate legal reason for a sentence...

Now in saying that, I have also seen a LOT of very professional state judges. It occurs to me that because the US population is huge, you are bound to end up with one or two bad apples. After all, if you have 20,000 judges, and 1 in every thousand is bad, then you would have 20 bad judges for people to see on Youtube.

Cheers