News & Updates

Recent polling indicates that the chief justice race between Judge Robert Vance Jr. and Roy Moore is a dead heat, a somewhat surprising turn of events given that Vance did not enter the race as the Democratic candidate until September. Since then, Vance has raised $500,000 and received endorsements from two prominent Alabama Republicans.

Following public interviews of 18 applicants and private deliberations, the appellate judicial commission selected three nominees for possible appointment to the supreme court vacancy created by Justice Ray Price’s retirement. Three interviewees were women and one was a minority, with six from outside metropolitan areas. Governor Nixon must make the appointment within 60 days.

Supporters of Amendment 3, which would alter the composition of the appellate judicial commission and require the commission to identify 4 (rather then 3) nominees for each vacancy, announced that they will not campaign for the amendment’s passage.

Governor Cuomo’s first appointments to the state’s appellate courts reflect an emphasis on diversity. Of the seven appointments, one judge is Asian, two are black, and one is openly gay. There is diversity in their professional backgrounds as well. The governor appoints judges to the appellate division from nominees submitted by a screening panel.

This fall, judges are running in contestable elections in 32 states and standing in yes/no retention elections in 17 states. Judicial elections are typically low-information contests, where voters may cast their ballots based on party affiliation, name recognition, or ballot position rather than on qualifications and experience. But in a handful of states, voters will have the benefit of broad-based and objective evaluations of incumbent judges’ performance on the bench and, in one state, of the judicial potential of their challengers.

All eight candidates for the state’s appellate courts qualified for public financing, with supreme court candidates receiving $240,100 each and court of appeals candidates receiving $164,400. At least two outside groups are raising and spending funds in support of the Republican supreme court candidate.

The state bar association launched a website to give voters more information about appellate judges standing for retention. The site explains the merit selection and retention system, provides bios and photos of judges on the ballot, and includes links to judges’ decisions. It was created in response to the judicial ratings issued by the state chamber-backed Oklahoma Civil Justice Council, based on judges’ rulings in civil liability cases.

With North Carolina's election day looming near, The Charlotte Observer has featured two contrasting opinion pieces, each advocating for the appointment or election of North Carolina judges.

The Iowa Supreme Court finds itself battling to maintain a fair and independent judiciary as a group of Iowans, now backed by the state's Republican party, intensify their campaign for the removal of Justice David Wiggins. In an attempt to keep campaign politics out of Iowa's judicial merit selection system, Justice Wiggins, like his previously ousted colleagues, has refused to launch a retention campaign to fight his removal.

Based on Colorado’s Know Your Judge PSA, the North Carolina Bar Association has released a its own PSA that urges voters to take the initiative to become informed about their judicial candidates before they vote and not to skip the judicial portion of the ballot.

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.

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.

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.

In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blocked a Montana state law barring political party endorsements of judicial candidates.

A circuit court judge rejected a challenge to the ballot summary for a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the governor to name an additional member of the commission that nominates potential appellate judges and increase the required number of nominees from three to four.

The cast of "West Wing" has reunited to film two short web videos, urging voters to participate in nonpartisan state supreme court elections. One video specifically plugs Michigan Supreme Court candidate Bridget Mary McCormack while the other is a geared toward a more national audience.

In "Check One and the Accountability Is Done: The Harmful Impact of Straight-Ticket Voting on Judicial Elections," the authors argue that straight-ticket voting plays a pernicious role with respect to voter choice and “renders meaningful judicial accountability highly unlikely.” The authors question the legitimacy of a vote “based upon minimal information and reasoning” and argue that "marketing judges as mere accessories to the whole of a political party is simply bad for justice."

Instead of launching his own campaign to fight back against the effort to remove him, Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins affirmed his belief that politicizing the courts leads to outcome-motivated judges who hold themselves accountable to donors and critics instead of the law. Similarly, while Florida State Supreme Court Justice Peggy Quince has launched a campaign to stay on the bench, doing so makes her “uncomfortable.”

The U.S. Senate voted to approve, by an 89-1 vote, Stephanie Rose as a U.S. district court judge. To date, President Obama has appointed 72 women to the federal bench, which is the most ever appointed by a president in a single term. Rose is the first woman to serve on the Southern District of Iowa.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision that rejected a constitutional challenge to the state’s merit selection system. Opponents of the process argued that having five lawyers on the nine-member supreme court nominating commission, who are not popularly elected or appointed by an elected official, violates the Equal Protection Clause’s “one person, one vote” requirement.