Gibbs Knotts, a political science professor at the College of Charleston, said many of South Carolina’s judges have also served as legislators, which results in a lack of separation between the two bodies.
“There’s this inbreeding where you’ve got people leaving the Legislature to become judges,” he said. “The whole hallmark of our system is to have an independent judiciary that can make decisions about things in a way that keeps the politics out of it.”
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