1823 Feb. 16

J.B's Articles and Reasons

Judiciary

1 To the people at large possessors of the supreme Constitutive power the function of placing the several Judges efficiently in the [...?] judicial districts ought not to be attributed.

Reason. They can not have sufficient means of being antecedently sufficiently acquainted with the aggregate appropriate aptitude of those who would be proposed or propose themselves for the office.

Reason 2. To find time sufficient for the exercise of such a function well or ill in addition to the operations necessary to the procurement of subsistence would be physically impossible.

2 In each such Judicial district neither ought the same power to be attributed with reference to the Judicatory having authority in and over such their respective districts

Reason 1. Want of adequate means of acquaintance /information/ as above

2. Probability of partial affection: and corruptive intimacy between the Judge so appointed and those leaders of the people by whose influence he had been appointed.

[...?] For this reason in each such district the functionary filling this office should at the time of his nomination be one of whom it is ascertained that he is as free as may be from all personal connections within the district.

3. The power of displacing the functionary in question after experience had of him ought to be vested in the hands here in question. But /And/ if the power of placing were in the same hands, the power of displacing would be likely to remain unexercised in cases in which a well grounded demand for the exercise of it had place.

4. The mode of exercising the power of displacing a Judge by the Electors of his district ought to be by secret suffrages openly delivered as in the case of an Election of the Members of the supreme legislative.