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Categories: Equality / Civil Rights, Civil Liberties / Privacy, Peace & Social Justice, Economic Fairness & Security, Environment / Conservation, Effective & Ethical Government, Electoral Reform, Consumer and Worker Protection, Property Rights, Separation of Powers / Federalism, Crime & Penal Reform, Religion, Immigration, Reproductive Rights
Categories: Equality / Civil Rights, Civil Liberties / Privacy, Peace & Social Justice, Economic Fairness & Security, Environment / Conservation, Effective & Ethical Government, Electoral Reform, Consumer and Worker Protection, Property Rights, Separation of Powers / Federalism, Crime & Penal Reform, Religion, Immigration, Reproductive Rights
We can't get rid of federal judges through recall or election, but we can deal with state and local judges that must stand for re-election.
I have been guilty in the past of not paying attention to these elections, and apparently I am not alone, because almost all judges up for re-election win it. But I am prepared to give these votes a lot more weight in the future.
I also confess to being totally ignorant about Colorado judges. Which ones are on the ballot this year? Any candidates for removal? My standards would include judges who:
- egregiously let their political views leak into their decisions by useingconvoluted logic and strained legal interpretations to arrive at decisions that are plainly unjust or not in the public interest;
- refuse to recuse themselves in cases where they have ties to individuals or corporate interests involved in the decision;
- demonstrate incompetence by having cases frequently overturned on appeal based on law or logic.
I invite you all to submit your list of candidates for judges that should be carefully scrutinized at the next or succeeding elections. And maybe if we can send a shiver through the Colorado judiciary, we can transmit it as well to the Federal judges who cannot be removed except by impeachment or resignation.
I have been guilty in the past of not paying attention to these elections, and apparently I am not alone, because almost all judges up for re-election win it. But I am prepared to give these votes a lot more weight in the future.
I also confess to being totally ignorant about Colorado judges. Which ones are on the ballot this year? Any candidates for removal? My standards would include judges who:
- egregiously let their political views leak into their decisions by useingconvoluted logic and strained legal interpretations to arrive at decisions that are plainly unjust or not in the public interest;
- refuse to recuse themselves in cases where they have ties to individuals or corporate interests involved in the decision;
- demonstrate incompetence by having cases frequently overturned on appeal based on law or logic.
I invite you all to submit your list of candidates for judges that should be carefully scrutinized at the next or succeeding elections. And maybe if we can send a shiver through the Colorado judiciary, we can transmit it as well to the Federal judges who cannot be removed except by impeachment or resignation.
There were five judges from the general SE Colorado area up for re-election in 2006. We read huge reports from a specialized data company which were compilations of the assessment surveys sent at random to people who had had some kind of court interaction with one of the judges. The surveys were also passed out to attorneys, court employees and law enforcement personnel. The surveys allowed comments and remarks to be included as well.
The names of judges up for re-election are supposed to be publicly advertised and posted so that anyone in the general public with an opinion can send it in to the review board.
Each judge also got a questionaire to fill out, rating himself on strengths and weaknesses and so on.
Once we got all this data and read it, we met to discuss it and figure out what questions we would ask when we interviewed each of the judges. After we had interviewed them all, we met to write up our recommendations, which were then published in the "Blue Book" that is sent out to registered voters before an election.
This is just a short overview, and I am probably leaving out important details, but that will at least give you some basic info about the current process. I hope it helps!
The boards are bipartisan and the members are automatically term limited. (I should have remember to say that yesterday.)
I can only speak for what I witnessed and what we were told in training. We did have some statements and accusations in our material that we followed up on in various ways. In those cases we asked the judges directly about the allegations, and for our group, we got satisfactory explanations.
During training we heard about situations where judges were making rulings that were often overturned and doing some fairly odd things. When a board comes to the conclusion that a judge should NOT be retained, they told us that often the judge just steps down and does not seek re-election.
As I said (in brief) yesterday, the board writes a fairly detailed report on each judge, which is openly published in the Blue Book that gets mailed to all registered voters. So I would say yes, the average voter is able to see information that would be relevant to their decision.
Here is a link to one of the judges our group interviewed and reported on, showing what our report was like. Link
If you click back through to the main site, you can probably get a lot more info.