Chief Justice Ruth McGregor is fighting the legacy of a judge's transgressions two decades ago

All four have railed about the "activist judiciary," which this year basically means judges who refuse to strip Mexican immigrants of their constitutional rights. And they would love nothing better than a series of high-dollar judicial campaigns in which candidates vow to outdo each other on the issue of who can throw the most immigrants in the clink.

My head aches.

"Folks, it's about accountability," Pearce told the committee examining the issue. He said that voters passed Proposition 100 in 2006 to bar illegal immigrants from being released on bail — yet the court operated under a "don't ask/don't tell" policy for months and let the immigrants go anyway, until anti-immigration activists raised hell. "I can guarantee that, had they been elected, they would have given a lot more thought to the will of the people."

But here's where Pearce is completely, and undeniably, wrong.

Judges chosen through the merit selection system didn't set bail in the cases Pearce is referring to. That was actually done by commissioners — court employees who wouldn't be elected even if the entire merit system were overhauled under Pearce's plan.

No wonder we're forced to hear so much about poor dope-addled Judge Marquardt.

Despite my inherent cynicism, I have a hard time believing this is going to go anywhere.

There are a few reasons for that.

One is that Pearce's proposed changes would cost an estimated $17 million in Clean Elections money. That's a ridiculous waste, even for people who believe in Clean Elections.

The other reason is that so many people in Arizona are transplants. Some of us have lived under the thumb of elected judges — and we know just how screwy that system can be.

Back in Cleveland, where I'm from, it was common knowledge that you had to be a Corrigan or an O'Malley to be elected judge. Didn't matter how lousy your credentials or how slow your intellect. In the ridiculously long ballots we got stuck with every election, everyone knew that large quantities of Clevelanders would simply look for Irish surnames and check the boxes accordingly.

And the Corrigan problem was nothing compared to the corruption issue.

In Ohio, races became so expensive that Supreme Court candidates routinely were forced to raise more money than candidates for governor — and faced "Swift Boat"-style ads from hostile advocacy groups on top of whatever their opponent funded. Even the most political Ohio residents got sick of seeing commercial after commercial depicting various justices as on the take, or in favor of child molesting, or just plain evil.

Most of the financing came from lawyers and political action groups with business before the court, and the result was troubling to anyone who cares about justice. The justices never bothered to recuse themselves from cases in which they'd taken money from the litigants, and they didn't seem too eager to bend over backwards to prove they couldn't be bought, either. In 2006, the New York Times found that one justice ruled in favor of his contributors a staggering 91 percent of the time.

That's not an appearance of a conflict of interest; it literally is a conflict of interest, of gigantic proportions. Of course we want judges accountable to the people, but we don't want judges too accountable to people, particularly not people with chicanery on their minds.

Anyone who's moved here from Cleveland or Chicago or Detroit knows this. We know how imperfect pure democracy can be when it involves a dozen obscure positions and a bunch of desperate lawyers.

More than anything, we know that, in Arizona, we've got it pretty damn good.

It's interesting that one of the shrillest voices in this year's debate has been Carol Turoff. She was a member of the commission that helped select judges in Maricopa County, but now she's claiming that the system is biased and hopelessly partisan.

Frequent readers will remember that New Times was facing an out-of-control special prosecutor last year after we published the sheriff's home address on our Web site. Turoff attempted to contact the judge on the case on behalf of the prosecutor. That type of ex parte hearing is totally unethical — which is why we were all so relieved when the judge put an instant stop to Turoff's machinations and exposed them in open court.

Now, I know Turoff isn't agitating against our current judicial system simply because an ethical judge called bullshit on her. But it's still pretty ironic.

You can see why Carol Turoff doesn't like it, but for anyone who believes in civil liberties, the judicial system in Arizona seems to be one thing that's working just fine.