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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.
For those wondering, the website in question is http://www.showmecourts.org/
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.
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?
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
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.
In that case, we're batshit crazy, but not in the ways you think we are.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
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.