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Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Courts - Yes on All Judges

"Yes on All Judges: All of the state Supreme Court and appellate jurists on the ballot deserve to keep their jobs." That is the headline to this editorial today in the LA Times. Some quotes, relevant not only to California:

California's up-or-down vote on appellate justices is meant to balance judicial independence with public oversight. It doesn't always work out that way; justices tend to either be rubber-stamped at the ballot box or targeted for defeat by single-issue activists. In 1986, voters ousted Chief Justice Rose Bird and associate justices Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso after a campaign focusing on their rulings to delay executions or overturn death sentences. No justices have been tossed out since, but not for lack of trying.

A more subtle danger to the courts' integrity is voters who fail to read up on the justices or, worse, flippantly vote no because of any one of a number of specious reasons. But judicial independence depends on citizens learning as much as possible about the courts and the justices.

To help Indiana voters attain that knowledge, the ILB has created resource pages for the 2006 Indiana Appellate Judicial Retention Election. As reported in this entry on Sunday:
There is a good deal of useful information on the ILB Resource Page to help voters learn more about the appellate courts and the justices and judges -- biographies of each candidate, results of the state bar association poll of lawyers, background articles on the way appellate judges are selected in Indiana.

New this weekend on the Resources Page is a table providing links to online webcasts in which the judges and justice up for retention this year participated.

Early in the upcoming week, the ILB hopes to post one final resource for voters -- answers from the judges and justice to a series of questions posed by the ILB, somewhat along the lines of Howard Bashman's "20 Questions for the Appellate Court Judge." Watch for it.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 18, 2006 01:17 PM
Posted to Courts in general