Evaluating Appellate Judges: Preserving Integrity, Maintaining Accountability

August 11, 2011

This national conference considered ways to improve existing processes for evaluating the performance of appellate judges and for informing voters about evaluation results.

Chief Justice Mark Cady of the Iowa Supreme Court was the featured speaker.

National Conference on Evaluating Appellate Judges

IAALS administered a survey of appellate judges and justices in eight of the eleven states that have official appellate JPE processes. Drawing from these survey results, conference materials, and participant dialogue, this post-conference report discusses the various approaches currently in place for evaluating appellate judges and justices, and identifies themes, recommendations, and areas for future work in appellate JPE.

More Resources

KUVO interview of Rebecca Love Kourlis: “How Should Appellate Court Judges Be Evaluated?”
Video clips from Justice Cady's Presentation: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3
Katy Farrell provided coverage of the event on Judgepedia
Professor Mitu Gulati’s paper, “’Not that Smart’: Sonia Sotomayor and the Construction of Merit.”