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Very few people in this country actually know how federal judges are appointed – the convoluted system whereby lawyers must emerge from a closed-club system of other lawyers, the so-called Judicial Advisory Committees or JACs, who must first give them the nod.

Before the justice minister even gets to see the approved list (and if one departs from the list, there’s an outcry from the bar and hell to pay), the lucky sperm club, as one former courts reporter always called it, has had its say. God knows what good names are left on the cutting room floor.

And besides, Ford et al were elected and judges aren’t.

As my beloved legal muse says, “The judge is a citizen with one vote and it isn’t with his robes on.”

That lends the elected a majesty the appointed don’t have.

Real people actually went to a poll and marked X by the Conservative candidates’ names. The free and fair election is the essence of democracy, a right that free men in this country and others have died to preserve.

Those few who would have approved Belobaba, or any other federal judge, remain firmly in the shadows.

It was in July that Ford’s newly-elected government announced it would enact legislation to reduce the number of city wards and councillors from 47 to 25, in the process almost doubling the ward populations.