Every six years our Florida Supreme Court justices are brought up for "merit retention." Since the 1970's, Florida citizens have had the power to retain or remove judges during each election year. (Booth) Three Supreme Court justices by the name of Barbara Pariente, Peggy Quince, and Fred Lewis are being targeted for trying to use political efforts to restore the courts. I do believe that politics played a role in the decision to place the three Florida Supreme Court justices up for retention because with the judicial system politics is apart of what maintains the checks and balances of whether these justices should be removed. Governor Rick Scott want to pit new people on the bench who he believes will be more on his side. .
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Politics and partisanship should play no role in our great judicial system. Florida law prohibits Justices from using a political party affiliation in conjunction with a judicial election, and the Judicial Code of Conduct strictly forbids the justices from disclosing their opinions on political issues. (Dockery) Merit retention elections are low-key, low-costing campaigns and people are not realizing that until now. Governor Rick Scott wants to get these three Supreme Court Justices out of the court because they've been overruling him, so he's looking to put people in there who will be more on his side. This will jeopardize the independence of the court. .
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The justices didn't do anything wrong, so I"m not understanding why people are trying to take them out in order to help Gov. Rick Scott when politics isn't supposed to have anything to do with the courts whatsoever. Florida adopted the nonpartisan merit-retention system for justices and appellate judges in the 1970's as a way of distancing the judicial system from politics. (Kennedy) Merit retention was designed to give Floridians the ability to vote a justice off the bench for unethical, inappropriate or corrupt behavior.
