Expert Opinions

In response to record-breaking judicial election spending, and an unprecedented series of scandals involving supreme court justices, reform-minded folks in Pennsylvania are making historic strides toward change.

For the last ten years, IAALS—the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System—has worked to rebuild the civil justice system. After much work, and through collaboration with some of the very best minds in the country, we are finally reaching a critical goalpost in that mission.

Judges are the linchpin of the court system—the piece that that holds the wheels on. When a judge is engaged, attentive, and dedicated to assuring that each litigant gets the best the system can offer, then the process moves smoothly. When a judge is overworked, out of touch, or unprepared, then the wheels fall off.

It is no surprise that there is much confusion around how judges get to be judges in the United States. No two states use the same method to select and retain their judges, and even in individual states, the method may vary by the level of court and even location.

he Quality Judges Initiative at IAALS, along with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and other members of our advisory committee, has been reaching out to governors of these states to urge them to use nominating commissions when filling court openings that occur between scheduled elections. These vacancy nominating commissions invite applications for open positions, screen and interview the candidates who apply, and recommend a short list of the best qualified to the governor for appointment.

States across the country are wrestling with the question of whether a mandatory retirement age should be imposed upon judges, and if so, what that age should be. A number of states are considering raising or eliminating their age limits, while in at least one state, lowering the maximum age has been proposed by legislators to try and keep the courts in line.

In response to the end-of-term decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court on marriage equality and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), some presidential candidates are calling for changes to the life tenure that justices enjoy under Article III of the U.S. Constitution.

In a ruling that took some fair courts advocates by surprise, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the authority of states to bar judges and judicial candidates from personally soliciting campaign contributions. Chief Justice Roberts delivered the majority opinion in Williams-Yulee v. The Florida Bar, holding that “[a] State’s decision to elect judges does not compel it to compromise public confidence in their integrity.”

If you’re like most prospective students, there’s a good chance the U.S. News & World Report Law School Rankings will play some kind of role in your decision about where to go to law school. We can all debate the merits of the rankings as a method for choosing a law school, but we can’t stop the world from clamoring for them. So until they’re announced, here are some things to keep you occupied.

Last Tuesday’s Supreme Court argument was the latest chapter in the Court’s struggle to balance electoral candidates’ right to solicit campaign donations against the appearance or actual threat of corruption that arises when litigants or attorneys donate to a judge’s election campaign and later appear before that same judge in court. What all the Justices seemed to agree about—that electing state court judges poses great risk to the legitimacy of the states’ judiciaries—remains beyond their power to remedy.

ETL is about to release its first major report—a study of the Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program. The report is not even public yet, but it was already highlighted in the Wall Street Journal and criticized at Above the Law. Ultimately, if law schools are going to develop programs that better prepare students and if prospective students are going to rely on those programs, then legal employers must value them. And, we're working on ways to help ensure that happens.

In 2014, we have continued to see a rise in the number of, and interest in, alternative processes designed to provide a more streamlined approach to the pretrial and trial process. While these programs are known by many different names, they all focus on increasing access to our civil justice system. Given the number of programs that have been implemented nationwide, and their diversity, we have updated our chart of these programs, which catalogs their unique elements.