At a time when, as WFB puts it, "federal courts sometimes appear to be deciding

just about everything--whether you can pray at school, execute criminals, abort a fetus, have a basketball team without women on it," Congress had just authorized a 25 per cent increase in the number of federal judges. How should they be chosen? This productive conversation ranges over the differences between trial judges and appellate judges, the ways judges have been chosen in the past, and efforts being made in some states to improve judges' performance.