Selection Snapshots

During a series of panels that comprised a Defending Iowa’s Courts event, the executive director of the state ACLU chapter described an organized national effort to dismantle judicial merit selection processes. The panel also discussed legislative attacks on Iowa’s courts in the wake of the Varnum v. Brien decision...

House Speaker Dean Cannon announced that he would not seek major changes to the judiciary in the 2012 legislative session. In the 2011 session, Cannon unsuccessfully proposed a constitutional amendment that would have split and expanded the supreme court. Instead, voters in 2012 will only weigh in on whether to...

Governor Rick Perry has made more appointments to the supreme court than any other Texas governor. While he has been praised for diversifying the court, his appointees have been characterized as business-friendly and results-oriented. Since 2000, defendants such as oil companies, insurance firms, and other big...

President Obama nominated supreme court justice Andrew Hurwitz to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. If Hurwitz is confirmed, Governor Brewer will have the opportunity to make her third appointment to the five-member court.

The November 2011 edition of Selection Snapshots is now available. Sign up for Selection Snapshots and other IAALS newsletters here .

The judicial nominating commission released 40 years of data on those who have been recommended and appointed to the D.C. superior court and court of appeals. The commission’s process has become increasingly transparent in recent years, beginning with the release of the names of all judicial applicants in 2008.

There are fourteen trial court seats up for election in Manhattan, but candidates are all running unopposed. The five supreme court candidates were nominated at a party convention. Of the nine civil court candidates, only one faced an opponent in the primary.

According to a report on campaign spending in state supreme court elections in 2009-10, special interest groups accounted for 30% of the money spent and paid for three out of four attack advertisements. The $4.9 million spent on judicial retention elections more than doubled the $2.2 million spent in such races during...

Christie campaigned for Republican state legislators, who are up for reelection in November, on the issue of “elitist judges.” Christie plans to propose a constitutional amendment to bypass the ruling. Click here to read the article.

A joint legislative committee considered changing the process for selecting the state’s appellate judges. The primary proposal is to put party labels for judicial candidates back on the ballot, in order to enhance voter information. Click here to read the article.