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Ask Slashdot: How To Become Informed In Judicial Elections?
First time accepted submitter yincrash writes "Today I've been looking up information on local elections and have found it virtually impossible to determine information on judicial elections, both with regards to information on the candidate, and what makes a good judge. Is there a good way to find information on these candidates? chooseyourjudges.org seems to agree that this is basically an impossible task. What do slashdotters do in an information vacuum? Just abstain from voting? Write-in something in protest?"
The Bar does not allow judge candidates to answer many of the questions you would like answered. This professional organization is choosing to require the judge candidates to withhold this information. If the candidates do not follow the rules set by the bar they could loose their law license and be ineligible to be a judge. Your only option is to complain to the Bar in hopes that they will be influenced by your complaint.
If you're in a state where the vote isn't "choose between Person X and Person Y to be a judge", chances are the vote is to retain an existing judge for another term. My philosophy has been that, unless I become aware of gross misconduct (i.e. bribery, criminal prosecution, failure to recuse self when obviously interested in the case, etc.), I vote to retain
The rationale is that the judiciary is supposed to be apolitical. If they have to go through campaigning, the way other candidates do, they become subject to campaign contributions and all the evils those entail. Leave them where they are unless they've done something obviously wrong.
Well, in the UK we have police commissioner elections with similar problems at the moment.
You're not in an information vacuum - the information is there, it's just buried.
I can't speak for every state, but here in Missouri, the Missouri Bar association runs a website which publishes recommendations from a Bar association committee based on individual performance evaluations provided by lawyers, and also reports on the technical quality of opinions written by the judge in question. They summarize their findings very nicely, provide a "Retain/Dismiss" recommendation, and cite sources for all of their claims and opinions.
I'd recommend browsing your state's bar association website to see if they offer a similar service.
Attending Northwestern University in Evanston, I came across a "voters guide" to the judges stuck to a lamp post. I wish I had copied it down or photographed it, it was a complete classic exercise in an unabridged and uncensored rundown of who these people are. One remark sticks in my mind nearly 40 years later, that a Cook County judge had the nickname "Fathead McGillicuddy." The colorful nature of the remarks only got better from there.
Would that we could get the rumors and the slanders and the inuendo and the things known to the poor defense attorneys (and defendants). One can always run such "through a filter" to sort out genuine dirt from campaign hyberbole, much as we process the negative ads the major office seekers run against each other. But at least it would be something to go on.
I do not vote for judges who claim to be "tough on drugs/drug offenders" or judges who advertise their high conviction rate. (Which is pretty much all of them.) I want correct interpretation of the law and presumption of innocence, not jails full of non-violent offenders. The last one I remember voting for advertised that she (as a private lawyer) had success getting bad laws knocked down and going after corrupt politicians. She lost.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Things to check:
- Your local bar associations often provide ratings of who they think is good.
- Your local papers will probably have endorsements and explain why.
- Any organizations you support may have voting guides.
- Of course, if you've had any dealings with the court system in question, you can use your own experience to decide on incumbents at least. For example, I could intelligently vote on 1 of the judges running this year because I'd been in her courtroom as a juror.
I am officially gone from
I go to http://www.smartvoter.org/ for almost all of my candidate research. You can't see a judge's prior rulings from there, but at least some of them post their priorities. If a candidate doesn't submit a profile to their database, I usually ignore them come election day.
I don't like anybody holding power for too long, and typically when a judge gets elected it's a position for life. Most attorneys are reluctant to run against a sitting judge, so many times they don't even have an opponent. So when they do have an opponent, I usually vote against the one with "Judge" in front of their name.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
In the ballot I just voted on, all or nearly all of them were running unopposed.
But there was a space fore a write in
This is the first US election I have voted in - I only became a citizen in 2009
And in the last week we have had phone calls asking us to vote for "One Man One Woman"
which was a good song, but I don't think it was Abba's best
This may be a bit too much in the vein of Slashdot-centric posting. Others will agree, and I may be modded up into the stratosphere. Yet I keep and will keep saying that predicting your own possible mod-point oppression is one of the major negative characteristics of Slashdot posters, besides all the positive stuff there ( still ) is.
Certainly not a disinterested source, but the local bar association usually has a list of the judges and recommendations FOR or AGAINST many of them. I just saw the one from the Chicago Bar Association, and most of the votes were "Yes" (retain) with a few exception.
Since the bar represents the attorneys who deal with the judges on a regular basis, I figure they likely have the most experience with judges. You can usually do a quick Google on their "no" suggestions and find plenty of juicy stories (sleeping, shouting, capricious rulings, etc.)
Generally: in the absence of information on a topic, leave it blank.
I asked my friend who's a general practice lawyer. He does defense work, family law etc. They tend to know all of the people running personally and are most interested in a fair and impartial judge regardless of party. Other than that I couldn't find any information online or in newspapers. The media doesn't seem to care about district/municipal judges which is incorrigible since they influence the general public more directly than any other elected official.
I came across this site while doing research as well.
From the site:
It came in pretty handy. Perhaps other states have similar web sites?
If you want to make an informed decision concerning judicial candidates there is regrettably only one thing you can do: dedicate a painful amount of time to seeing how they act in court first hand. Looking at rulings and public records does almost nothing to break down what goes on in the court on a day to day basis or communicate the prejudices and attitude of the judicial candidates. If you want to know who you should vote for you have to see them in action. This isn't really an option for most people, but luckily many communities have a dedicated group of volunteers who regularly attend court for no other purpose than providing information to the public concerning not only the activities of the judge but of the court in general.
When I first became a court stenographer I noticed that the same few people seemed to be in the gallery every day. I eventually found out that they were volunteers from a local judicial monitoring group that tried to keep the public apprised of what went on in their courts. Over a decade later I happened to recognize one of the ladies at my churches sewing circle. I found out that they, (mostly retirees with some connection to the legal system; wives and parents of law enforcement or even former DA's and attorneys) try to have someone at every public hearing, but that for the most part people don't seem to care what goes on in their courts. She told me that while it's hard to find someone to attend it's even harder to get the public interested in what is going on.
Look at the local newspaper, many publish information that will help you find such a group. You might find an advertisement seeking "court watchers" as they call themselves or even a quarterly report they pay to publish. Contact anyone you know who has an affiliation with the local court system and they will likely be able to tell you directly, or point you to someone who can, if their is such a group in your area. Too often people only think of their courts when they're in them, I for one am glad your interested.
Oregon has a fun law passed during WW-I when most voters(men only) were unavailable requiring all lawyers running for office to be members of the state bar association. The state bar association by its rules will disbar anyone running against a sitting judge in Oregonthem disqualifying. That is why unless there is a vacated seat you never get more than one choice in Oregon. In Soviet Oregon Judges vote for who you can vote for.
I abstain from voting for anyone or anything I do believe I have a basic understanding of. And if the only person running for a position is the incumbent, then I absolutely refuse to vote. I'd love to have the incumbent look at the paper the next day, see his 50 votes and think "Hmm maybe these people don't really like me at all?" Maybe it will encourage someone to run against them in the next election? It never happens though, people seem to default to filling out the only choice if there is only one choice.
A friend of mine is a small-town judge. He's elected, but it's a part-time job (10 hours per week I think). He's judge in the town where he lives and works as an attorney in a neighboring town.
In his small town, my friend got elected because the town councilmen asked him to run. They'd worked with him in his day job (where he was representing a company trying to get permits in the town and whatnot) and thought he was a good guy. This is how things get done on a local level: the local officials say "we need a new judge" (or registrar of deeds or whatnot) and pick someone they think is level-headed and responsible.
What I'm trying to say is that unless you are plugged into local politics, it probably does not make much difference to you whether your new judge is someone the Republicans think is a good guy, or someone the Democrats think is a good guy. You'll get a good guy either way -- unless of course all the members of one party are a bunch of jerks, in which case you don't trust their judgment and want the other guy.
At the local level, some of these positions are just a popularity contest. I usually abstain because I have never lived in one place long enough to know who's who.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
At least for your states Supreme Court you can lookup their written decisions. Sometimes Wikipedia has a listing of individual judges and their decisions for your state. Pick an issue you know when to the state court and lookup the decision. Each state should have these decisions online in some form. Try searching for keywords like Abortion, Marijuana, Alcohol (Wine shipments to your state and microbrew issues). In Indiana we are trying to vote out "Steven H. David" for his decision stating "We hold that there is no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers." http://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/pdf/05121101shd.pdf
It all starts at 0
Not as much as, say, a legislator or mayor, but judges definitely are part of the political process. For example, right now, judges in the Bronx are heavily involved in the stop-and-frisk policy debate, mostly because they've been throwing out bogus "trespassing" charges caused by the police randomly harassing people in the hallways of public housing projects.
Good judges see their role as the umpire calling balls and strikes, but like umpires the size of the strike zone varies a bit: Some are more friendly to prosecutors / plaintiffs, some more friendly to defendants. Some are more concerned about taking the time to ensure fairness, some are more concerned with not wasting the court's valuable time with trivialities. Some will be faced with completely unprecedented sets of facts where there isn't good guidance from the legislature or legal precedent, and under those circumstances only have their own opinions and sense of fairness to draw on. Some will be more strict about when they should recuse themselves than others.
I am officially gone from
Don't you kind of expect that there's going to be some of that on a US-based site with a largely US-based membership?
Alexa.com puts Slashdot audience as 27.6% from USA, closely followed by India at 25.8%. Then are Canada and UK at about 5% each and the last third consists of long tail of countries (Germany, France, Pakistan, Australia...) with less than 3% each. So while USA, making up one fourth of the audience, is the largest single group, the "largerly US-based membership" seems a bit misleading. Are those statistics accurate? I don't know but they're the best ones available to us as /. hasn't commented on this at all, aside from the decade old faq entry.
That all said, I (being from Europe) don't mind US-centric stories: My reasons for reading Slashdot are, to some extent, similar to my reasons for watching the daily show. It offers nice glimpses to the society on that side of the ocean.
Ok dude my ballot was 4 pages long. Not even 8.5x11 pages long. None of the judges had opposition. Most of the local people did not either. If I don't have the time or the energy to run for one of those positions, what am I supposed to do? Force someone to run at gun point? And I didn't say that I vote blindly. I said I abstain from voting when I do not understand an issue. I would think you could be okay with that. At least I am not going down the ballot marking every single D or R on the ballot. But if you're not okay with it, I don't care. It's my right to vote, and I will do so how I see fit. At least I try to tackle the important issues and ignore the ones that I don't have the time to address.
As a litigator, I have trouble advising people on how to vote on any given judge. There are some judges I would like to see removed from the bench - simply because they're bad (don't read motions, show up late, don't listen to argument, make their decision when they receive the Complaint, ignore case law when it suits them, are consistently head-shakingly wrong, etc) - others I would like to see removed because their courtroom demeanor or procedure slow down cases and make litigation much more expensive.
/bad/ judges). The best I can do is pass around the local bar association's voter guide. Because the folks that write that guide are all attorneys the packet is mostly a bland recitation that most judges are qualified, occasionally with a very soft rebuke "needs to work on being more efficient and prepared" with the worst of the worst bad actors singled out at the ends as "not qualified."
/sigh
Now here's the problem -- I can't tell you who these judges are. I won't even say anything about them when I can do so anonymously. Why? Because I know most of them will still be judges next week, and I'll have to appear before them. (remember, these are the
Saddly, I think the informed voters get lost in the shuffle of folks that just show up and hit yes on every judge's retention ballot.