The idea of doing away with judicial elections in favor of a merit-based appointment system has been kicked around for quite a while, but it now has a particularly forceful and eloquent advocate &tstr; retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

O'Connor, who left the bench in 2006, is devoting her retirement to trying to abolish judicial elections, as well as pushing for renewed emphasis on civics education in public schools.

O'Connor sees judicial elections as a threat to judicial independence because of the huge amount of money that pours into judicial races around the country.

"It's the flood of money coming into our courtrooms. You haven't suffered too much of this, but you will if you don't think about this and change it," O'Connor said at a recent Seattle University Law School conference.

O'Connor said multi-million-dollar campaigns make it difficult to know whether a judge is deciding a case based on the merits or on concerns about re-election.

The current Supreme Court apparently is sensitive to O'Connor's concern.

This past June, the high court ruled in Caperton v. Massey Coal that judges must step aside from cases where there are large campaign contributions, because of the appearance of bias.

O'Connor favors a system in which nonpartisan commissions would select judges based on merit. Once the judges' term ended, the voters could decide whether to retain them.

O'Connor may be on to something.

The current system -- in Pennsylvania, anyway -- is deeply flawed.

Outsized campaign donations aside, voters are constrained by an anti-democratic judicial code of "ethics" from learning much of anything about the judicial philosophy or ideological positions of the candidates.

This leaves Pennsylvanians little choice but to consider superficial elements, such as ballot position, party affiliation, gender or home town, in deciding whom to vote for.

Most of all, though, it's about the money.

In 2007, the race for three state Supreme Court seats (two vacancies, one retention) generated nearly $8 million in campaign donations &tstr; much of it from lawyers and groups that may appear before the court.

O'Connor's proposal wouldn't entirely do away with judicial elections, so the potential for abuse would still be there, albeit, to a lesser degree.

And while she would like to do away with judicial elections altogether, the problem is most acute with appellate judgeships. Candidates for county judgeships, it seems to us, are known quantities to local voters.

Regardless of the merit of merit selection, doing so requires amending Pennsylvania's Constitution &tstr; a daunting task in itself.

Such a proposal must be approved by two consecutive sessions of the state Legislature before being place on the ballot, where voters have the final say.

Legislation to do so is routinely submitted with each new session of the Legislature, but gets shunted aside by more pressing matters of the day.

Whether that happens this time, with the full force of a former Supreme Court Justice brought to bear, remains to be seen.

But we salute the effort.