> Anyway, I can't think of any ways to improve on what is a pretty good, albeit imperfect system. I don't think a perfect system is attainable because humans are too imperfect. We just try to get as close to the limit as possible.

There are all sorts of possibilities. You could appoint judges for long terms -- say 10 years -- and then allow the people to vote to keep them in office. The election wouldn't be competitive, meaning a judge wouldn't be campaigning against somebody, so a lot of the campaign issues disappear. This is actually how the California system tends to work in practice (theoretically CA judges in the lower courts have to run in competitive elections but it rarely happens).

The idea behind this system is that it insulates judges for long periods of time but gives the public the ability to weigh in on really horrendous judges.

You could subject judges to a public recall: if the people get upset with a judge, they would be allowed to take a vote on his her or removal (another feature of the California system).

As commie_bat noted, you could simply have judges appointed by non-partisan committees rather than legislatures/executives. This makes them very unaccountable, but a committee of retired judges would be theoretically able to weed out lawyers or judges whose beliefs did not comport with the law.

One thing I haven't mentioned, though, is that there's evidence that the federal system we use (president appoints, Senate confirms) may not be too effective in actually eliminating partisan bias. Statistical studies that examine the decisions of Supreme Court justices find that there is a strong corelation between the political beliefs of the appointing president and the way the judge votes on particular policy issues. E.g. a justice appointed by a Republican is more likely to side against the defendent in a death penalty appeal. These studies don't take into account the legal reasoning provided for a decision, which suggests that a lot of judicial opinions may be outcome-based, i.e. the judge decides what he or she thinks is the best policy outcome and then finds reasoning to support it.

If judges are basically unremovable once appointed, how can we deal with that kind of problem?

Stephen