News & Updates

Indiana's superior courts are created by statute, and as such, the method of selecting judges is determined by statute as well and varies from county to county. In two counties, superior court judges are chosen through a commission-based appointment process, while in all other counties these judges are chosen in partisan or nonpartisan elections. Both of these selection processes are currently the subject of controversy.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor spent a few days last week with us here at IAALS, where we held a meeting of the O'Connor Advisory Committee to the Quality Judges Initiative. Justice O'Connor also engaged in a "fireside chat" under the rubric of the John Paul Stevens Lecture about her life and career. Former Arizona Chief Justice Ruth McGregor and I joined her for the conversation, but it was Justice O'Connor who stole the show.

The Coalition for Impartial Justice has been working for several years to move Minnesota from nonpartisan judicial elections to commission-based appointment with retention elections and performance evaluation, which would require amending the state constitution. The proposal has bipartisan support, with sponsors on both sides of the aisle, but some Republican lawmakers have recently withdrawn their support in response to pressure from their party.

The State Bar of Michigan, which represents more than 43,000 attorneys and judges, has asked the secretary of state to require disclosure of funders of "issue ads" in state elections. Specifically, the bar is seeking an interpretive ruling that such ads should be treated as advocacy rather than electioneering and thus as official campaign spending. Such a ruling would require the disclosure of donors who are currently anonymous.

In a 5-0 ruling, the Arizona Supreme Court struck down a law that required the state’s judicial nominating commission to send the names of five candidates to the governor for possible appointment. According to the court’s opinion, “the Legislature has no authority to statutorily mandate procedures inconsistent with Arizona's Constitution,” which allows commissions to give the governor as few as three names.

Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson of the Supreme Court of Texas announced this week that he will resign from the court effective October 1. He has served on the court since 2001. Chief Justice Jefferson implemented a number of administrative innovations during his tenure as chief. Chief Justice Jefferson is a founding member of the O'Connor Advisory Committee to the Quality Judges Initiative, having joined the committee soon after it was established in late 2009.

Part of what we do at IAALS is to convene people who have different viewpoints around a particular topic—in hopes that areas of consensus will emerge from the dialogue. We convened one such group last spring, comprised of ideologically and experientially diverse participants, on the subject of judicial selection and the attributes we want in our judges. Focused on a simple question, "What are the most important characteristics or qualities of a judge," there was remarkable unanimity around the room.

According to a poll funded by the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, 74 percent of Oklahoma voters favor choosing appellate judges in contested elections over a merit selection and retention process, and 69 percent support amending the constitution to make this change. Seventy-six percent of respondents want term limits for appellate judges.

Last week, Governor Brownback nominated his chief counsel, Caleb Stegall, to a newly created seat on Kansas' court of appeals, reigniting a war of words between his supporters and detractors. Now, in response to the charge that Brownback pushed for a change in the selection process in order to appoint Stegall to the bench, a member of the judicial nominating commission is speaking out.

A recent piece in the Chicago Sun-Times sheds light on the process for selecting judges in Cook County, Illinois. Earlier this month, the Cook County Democratic Party's Judicial Selection Committee met to "slate" candidates, a process through which candidates meet with the committee to discuss their qualifications in hopes of getting the party's endorsement. Some participants in the slating process assert that most of the party's picks are pre-determined based on political connections instead of qualifications.

For the second time in his tenure—and the second time in state history—New Jersey Governor Chris Christie declined to renominate a sitting supreme court justice. Christie offered two rationales for the decision to pass over Justice Helen Hoens in favor of superior court judge Faustino Fernandez-Vina: his interest in sparing Justice Hoens the senate's likely "political vengeance" in the confirmation process and the need for more diversity on the high court.

On August 12, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor delivered the keynote address at the 2013 Legislative Summit of the National Conference of State Legislatures in Atlanta, Georgia. Justice O'Connor expressed concern that processes for selecting judges are becoming increasingly politicized, and that civics education is essential in helping young people understand that judges are obligated to make decisions based on the law, even if those decisions are politically unpopular.

Adequate training is vital in preparing judicial officers for the challenges of being on the bench. While this is true regardless of docket type, judicial education/training is especially important for domestic relations matters. The Honoring Families Initiative is undertaking research on how domestic relations training for judicial officers is provided in states across the country, and we would love to hear from you.

The North Carolina legislature sent to Governor McCrory for approval a bill that would revamp the state's elections, including eliminating public financing for appellate judicial elections. Created in 2002 by the Judicial Campaign Reform Act, the so-called "Voter-Owned Elections" program allowed candidates with qualifying contributions to receive a public grant to finance their campaigns and eliminated the need to seek campaign support from attorneys and others who may later appear before them in court.

Recently, speculation has surfaced about whether judicial selection and tenure will be addressed at a special legislative session in Oklahoma, called by Governor Fallin. Although a Republican legislator wrote a letter warning judges around the state of rumors that there would be efforts to impose term limits and to eliminate the judicial nominating commission, a spokesman for the governor offered assurances that the only topic for the special session is lawsuit reform.

Richard Gabriel recently penned an article for CNN following the conclusion of the George Zimmerman trial, in which he referenced several reports that examine potential biases in the justice system. Among them was IAALS’ Leveling the Playing Field: Gender, Ethnicity, and Judicial Performance Evaluation, which explores whether there is evidence that implicit biases enter into evaluations of judges’ performances.

On September 17, 2013, IAALS and the Byron R. White Center are bringing United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (ret.) to Colorado to deliver the 3rd Annual John Paul Stevens Lecture. The Stevens Lecture brings a well-known jurist to the University of Colorado Law School each year. Registration for the lecture is now open, and can be accessed online.

In Minnesota, a broad-based group known as the Coalition for Impartial Justice, which includes more than 30 business, labor, religious, citizen, and legal groups, is working to implement the 2007 recommendations of the Quie Commission. The commission was unanimous in calling for the adoption of a "merit selection" process for judges and a performance evaluation program, with a majority of the commission favoring retention elections for subsequent terms.

In April, the Arizona legislature passed and the governor signed a bill directing the state's judicial nominating commissions to submit the names of at least five finalists for each judicial vacancy. Last week, four members of the appellate judicial nominating commission filed a petition with the state supreme court to declare the new law unconstitutional. The law is in apparent conflict with a constitutional provision calling for the commission to submit at least three names.

A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice highlights the unprecedented number of judicial vacancies in federal district courts across the United States. Approximately ten percent of federal trial court seats are currently vacant. These vacancies, largely the result of drawn-out nomination and confirmation processes, have an increasingly negative impact on the effectiveness of both the criminal and civil justice systems. The report makes three observations about these vacancies.