Alan M. Feldman, the newly elected chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, announced his agenda for the coming year at the group's Dec. 6 annual meeting. With all due respect, chancellor, it's time for a new playbook.

Consider that Feldman's No. 1 priority for the coming year is to change the selection of judges in Pennsylvania from an elective system to a so-called merit selection system. The problem is that merit selection is not only a bad idea, it's an old idea. This chestnut has been on the Philadelphia Bar Association's wish list since at least 1956. A decent burial is long overdue.

For those unacquainted with this wretched excuse for judicial reform, merit selection is a highfalutin way of saying that ordinary citizens are too dim or too lazy to elect qualified judges. Proponents of merit selection would substitute the will of the people for backroom deal making by a cabal of politicians, lobbyists, lawyers and ideologues. Of the many things wrong with the idea, the worst is that it would exempt a co-equal branch of government from the transparency and accountability of the democratic process.

In a July 2005 article in the Bar Reporter, outgoing Chancellor Andrew A. Chirls wrote glowingly about a utopian judicial selection process uncontaminated by messy electioneering and unruly voters. In Chirls' apolitical utopia, a rigorous system made up of blue-ribbon committees, the governor and the state Senate would ensure that, like water filtered through charcoal, only the best and the brightest legal minds would make to the bench, there to dispense perfect justice. Yep. If you buy this riff, I have a nice bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Feldman inadvertently makes the case for judicial elections by citing the ouster by voters of state Supreme Court Justice Russell M. Nigro on November's statewide election ballot as a wake-up call to spur the passage of merit selection.

To the contrary, Justice Nigro's defeat is a museum piece for judicial elections. Most observers interpreted Nigro's unprecedented loss in the yes/no vote for retention to the Supreme Court as clear message by angry voters protesting a constitutionally suspect, middle-of-the-night pay raise the General Assembly voted for themselves, judges and some executive branch officials. Justice Nigro was a member of the court when it ruled previously that the "unvouchered expenses" loophole that enabled the bill was legal.

Feldman said that the Nigro case showed that judges needed to be protected from "political repercussions." He's wrong. Without judicial elections, an increasingly detached, arrogant and imperial judiciary could forever turn a deaf ear to the voice of the people. The Nigro defeat was a not-so-gentle reminder to judges and legislators not to take the people who pay their salaries for fools.

For real-world examples of merit selection at work, look no further than the recent U.S. Senate battles over President Bush's nominations to the federal bench. Ideologues and extremists have twisted the Senate's constitutional "advise and consent" function into a set piece for character assassination and political vitriol of the worst kind. The stench certain to emanate from the "world's greatest deliberative body" during the upcoming Senate judiciary hearings on Samuel Alito, Bush's current Supreme Court nominee, should cure all but the most love struck of any false romance with merit selection.

The motives of those who urge the surrender of our rights for our own good should always be suspect. Merit selection is a Trojan horse for those who wish to mandate radical reform from an unassailable bench. Like "unvouchered expenses," it is a means to political objectives, an end run around the separation of powers, the proper role of the judiciary, the state and federal constitutions, and most importantly, the will of the people.

Gerald K. McOscar is an attorney in Chester. If you would like to respond to this Slant or submit one of your own (750 words), contact Duane Swierczynski, editor in chief, City Paper, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., PA 19106 or e-mail duane@citypaper.net.