Non-lawyers as judges used to be possible in Georgia back when we had the J.P. (Justice of the Peace) system. They were all elected from the old militia districts which still exist but aren't used any more. In fact, I tried a case in front of a non-lawyer judge, Sarge Mashburn who was a J.P. out in Gwinnett County. Very nice man and he had been on the bench for quite awhile so he knew the ropes, and it was a pretty straightforward case. It worked out o.k. My dad also told me about a superior court judge who used to be a barber before he was a judge -- but I think he went to law school in between.
But it was a very limited system, and there were severe problems when a non-lawyer J.P. got hold of a complicated case. A lot of time and money was spent trying to clean up the mistakes they made - and it wasn't always possible. The J.P.s were eventually abolished, and that was a good thing on balance.
If some lawyers (and more importantly, the clients) had a complicated contract case in front of a journeyman judge with no legal training when he's just come on the bench, it would be an unmitigated disaster. Judging may not be rocket science, but it's become quite technical and complicated, and there's usually a substantial amount of money at stake. Not to mention people's freedom.
And the Georgia General Assembly has been experimenting a bit with non-lawyers writing laws (the number of lawyers in the GA has dropped precipitously, nobody's sure why). It doesn't work worth a darn. There are incredibly bad unintended consequences, a lot of confusion, and substantial financial costs for the poor schmoos who get caught in the toils of the law.
A hybrid system like the Georgia one works pretty well, the voters can throw a bad judge out on his ear if somebody's mad enough to run against him. But asking non-lawyers to be judges is like giving a guy off the street a box of tools and telling him to replace the fuel injector on your Maserati. It won't end well.
We kept lawyers on staff to "review" ~ not "write".
Fact is, legislation, regulations, handbooks, and public notices written by lawyers, or even committees of lawyers are litigation bombs waiting to blow up.
You must write the rules that control the margins of your society in the common tongue ~ not jargon.
I think the STATE needs to provide judges with lawyers to advise them ~ not just prosecutors and defense counsel.
Some people have a natural talent to be judges ~ some don't ~ most lawyers don't. With Georgia running out of lawyers your talented bench available for service on the bench is declining as well, and maybe dangerously so.
Again, bring in people who can judge ~ and provide them with legal assistants.
That's what we do with the Supreme Court ~ after all some of those people were NEVER practicing lawyers, and some of them did law so long ago they don't remember what it was about. Still, I bet even Ginsburg could run a bench all day long (with her staff available to deal with the questions). At the same time the guys on her staff probably couldn't hold up in 20 minutes of traffic court.