The Supreme Court recently unveiled a list of 27 candidates to succeed a justice who is to retire in September. It is the first time the top court has made public the list of justice candidates before a recommendation committee begins its screening process.
Individuals and organizations are allowed to express their opinions in written form on the qualifications of each candidate for 10 days through Friday. The recommendation committee is supposed to reflect the opinions in its work to select three final candidates. Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae will recommend one of them to President Park Geun-hye for designation as a justice, which is subject to approval by parliament.
The unprecedented move to disclose all candidates from the beginning is part of the Supreme Court’s efforts to ensure diversity and transparency in the selection process. The top court felt the need to improve the process after a justice nominee was embroiled in controversy early this year over his role as a prosecutor in the 1987 investigation of police officers accused of torturing a student activist to death.
It will not be easy to decide how much weight and credit should be put on the opinions expressed about each candidate. Giving too much consideration may cause concerns that the selection process will be more of a popularity test than a review of qualifications for a trustworthy justice. In the opposite case, the effectiveness of the new process will be brought into question.
The recommendation panel will also have to discern malicious slander against certain candidates, especially those with conservative or liberal convictions, from reasonable criticism.
Still, it is desirable to try to change the selection process to make it more transparent and open to a wide spectrum of views from the public.
What may be more important is whether the latest move by the Supreme Court will actually result in diversifying the composition of its 14-member bench. All but one of the sitting justices are career judges, with 12 of them being male graduates from the same school ― Seoul National University’s College of Law.
The list of 27 candidates also seems short on figures who can be expected to help diversify the monotonous structure of the top court. It includes 22 career judges, 23 SNU graduates and only one woman. It is notable that there is no professor or prosecutor on the list. The five others are lawyers.
If the Supreme Court bench is occupied by figures with similar backgrounds, it can hardly be expected to keep up with the diversity of social values and trends. Concern is already growing that the top court is increasingly tilted toward conservative judgments in favor of the establishment.
Hopefully, the ongoing selection process will result in making the best possible choice to help ease such public worries.
