NPR recently interviewed IAALS Executive Director Rebecca Love Kourlis about the impact anti-retention campaigns - such as the one launched against Iowa Justice David Wiggins - has on the judiciary. Kourlis said efforts by groups to oust judges solely for disagreeable decisions have opened up a whole new debate over how states select judges.

A group known as the Oklahoma Civil Justice Council released ratings of supreme court justices based on how they have ruled in civil liability cases. Four justices are standing for retention in November.

An analysis of voting in a supreme court primary election suggests “deep racial polarization.” In the race between incumbent justice Steve Gonzalez and a challenger who neither raised money nor campaigned, the challenger won 30 of 39 counties and nearly 40 percent of the statewide vote.

The conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity launched a campaign to highlight the records of the three justices standing for retention in November. The campaign includes television ads criticizing a supreme court ruling that kept an Affordable Care Act-related measure off the 2010 ballot.

The executive board of the state Republican Party voted to oppose the retention of three supreme court justices in November.

Iowans for Freedom announced plans for a statewide “NO Wiggins” bus tour that will oppose judicial activism and the retention of one of the seven justices who in 2009 recognized a right to same-sex marriage in the state’s constitution. The state bar is launching its own weeklong bus tour—the “Yes Iowa Justice Tour.”

Though the state’s judicial elections are nonpartisan in the sense that party affiliation does not appear on the ballot, the state Democratic Party endorsed a state representative who is challenging the sitting chief justice.

A Philadelphia-based Tea Party group vowed to challenge the retention of two supreme court justices on the ballot in 2013 if the state’s voter ID law is not in place for the November elections.

Prior to a campaign recess, the U.S. Senate confirmed two of the 17 pending nominees for federal district court vacancies. Fourteen of the 17 nominees received unanimous approval from the senate judiciary committee.

Over the last year, the percentage of women serving on the state’s courts has risen from 36.1 percent to 38.2 percent. Nationwide, women hold 27.5 percent of state court judgeships.

Ruth Bettelheim, a marriage and family therapist, wrote in the New York Times that children’s voices are being ignored or suppressed in custody discussions and agreements. She argues that a custody arrangement generally governs the schedule of children without change until they turn 18, despite the fact that the needs of children change as they get older.

Jeanne Teleia, a marriage and family therapist, told the North Hawaii News that conflict in divorce is damaging to children, but that help is available to mitigate the worst and most prevalent side effects. She encourages parents to commit to a child-centered divorce where parents put their anger aside, resulting in less stress and energy spent, fewer expenses, and less damage inflicted upon the children.