All politicians meet with lobbyists. It’s hard to get a handle on the needs of the nation (or state, or so on), and lobbying is how people inform their representatives of that need. Now whether those lobbyists are scumbags or saints, that’s a different question.

The problem is that the judges often use their decisions to campaign instead of simply applying the law. So they might give an unpopular criminal defendant a harsher sentence to look tough on crime or even tilt a trial against an innocent defendant. Not that doesn’t happen with judges that are appointed by the executive, but it’s usually not as bad.

What does that even look like as a business model, though? There’s an expectation now that you don’t pay for web browsers. What would a standalone Chrome, Inc. look like?