Federal Judges and Justices are nominated “through the Judiciary Committee as well as through the political pressures of the media, the American Bar Association and other special interest lobbying groups of which have helped to defeat Judge Bork’s nomination in the past. The nomination of judges at the federal level is driven by partisan and ideological concerns.”  (Epstein and Segal 2005). There is not much control over a judgeship once the judge is elected for he/she is in the seat forever unless discerned to be unethical or to possess criminal behaviour but there has been times where filibustering has occurred and the legislative has tried to remove judges by attempting to force them out by removing their tenure or forcing early retirement to no avail. Some judges are appointed by merit through a nominating committee and some are appointed by partisan. Federal judges are appointed with some courtesy of merit but the degree of merit has always strongly been debated. Jimmy Carter argued that federal judges should be selected on the basis of merit alone. Some state judges are appointed but the majority of them are elected by the citizens of the state based on merits for a person has to have a law degree and some type of formal magistrate (lower court) judgeship experience is preferred. Justice O’Conner has argued that judges at the state level should not be elected because there is a tendency for politics to play a part in the position afterwards due to the funding of campaign contributions. Whereas if the judge were appointed the bias would be removed. However the people would be taken out of the determining factor of the choice of judgeship. The President’s powers are limited because the Senate as to approve all judgeship nominees.” (Murphy and Pritchett 2007).

At the district level when an attorney applies for judgeships the names go into a ballot. Notice is given to the public to view the applicants to give their opinion about the applications. The Judicial Council then takes the results and interviews the most highly rated candidates and sends the top two recommendations to the Governor of the State. The process is political because a candidate is nominated based on his political standing in the community and may not always be nominated based on his merits. Hence a more qualified candidate may be overlooked simply because he is not well-liked. This especially happens within the smaller rural communities. In the federal courts the system is very political because the judgeships are for life tenure which needs to be amended. There is four to six year tenure for district and state judges which are very fair just in case there needs to be a change for the best interests of the public.

It is all but impossible to relieve the services of a U.S. Supreme Court judge unless he commits a criminal offense. The politics is often played to remove the judges by attempting to take away their retirement and tenure. The best angle would be to change the policies regarding their appointment.