doc_strange | Judges and Illinois ballots 2004

Planning to vote in Illinois this election? (Please do if you're a resident.)

Expecting to be lost when you hit the mammoth judicial retention/selection portion? Who can know 74 judges and a fistfull of new candidates all that well? Well, there's hope.

The Chicago Bar Association puts out its member-driven Judicial Evaluation Committee Findings each year. They're online. They're not just "recommend" or not. They give solid reasons based on the feedback of the people who've dealt with these individuals in their professional capacities. While most are deemed quite professional in their conduct and capability, some few are not. Worth a read before going to the polls. A bad judge can make an expensive mess of the legal system, and can be your caricature-bad-litigator's wet dream, allowing a case that should be tossed to make it into the pipeline, the news, and the political gristmills. Have a good look.

Edit: Note the big top list is just the judicial RETENTIONS. Be sure to also look at the evaluations for new CANDIDATES, towards the bottom.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

How hard can it be to bring a judge up to speed on applicable law in any particular case?

Incredibly hard. Good lord. Probably the top requirements in a good judge are knowledge of the law and temperment.

There's the evidence rules, on which a judge often rules in seconds flat. There's conflicting case law, and both sides will try to make their case look better by skewing the interpretation of the past cases. A good judge knows how to read other judges' opinions, and has already done so on key areas of the law. A lazy judge relies on the parties in the courtroom.

The cost to most of us in bad law, uncertainly, and appeals is incredible in the latter case.

Know of any sites that do the same thing for McHenry County?

You can probably call the McHenry Bar Assoc.. Everything else is a political recommendation. I really don't like the idea of trial judges being selected on the basis of the politics of their decisions. I'd like them selected on the sound legal basis of their decisions. The choice is living in a competitive political war, or under the rule of law.

I too am queasy about a site that gives an automatic "Not Recommended" rating if they refuse to be evaluated. Why does this site feel they cannot publish information on these judges anyway? Does first amendment not apply to text about judges? I'm sure I'm missing something here.

1) You are missing: the evaluations, given by attorneys and judges, are kept and maintained anonymously to avoid retribution. As a social scientist who deals with sensitive data, I can tell you plainly that it is impossible to fully anonymize detailed personal evaluation data. No responsible researcher publishes the data in full because those discussed can almost always (really or in their belief) figure out who said what, and take it out on them. Thus, unless the participants KNOW the data won't be published, you get bad data. You then use standard stats methods to cull the extreme datapoints from the analysis.

2) Again: if a medical doctor refused to be evaluated by his peers and patients in an AMA study, would YOU recommend him?

2) Again: if a medical doctor refused to be evaluated by his peers and patients in an AMA study, would YOU recommend him?

My knowledge of the AMA would render any evaluation by that organization as something to be reviewed extremely critically. They really are an elite priesthood that looks down on anyone that might have a disagreement with their One True Way. A doctor refusing such an evaluation would be akin to a Catholic priest refusing a spiritual evaluation given by Scientologists.

I have less knowledge of how much the legal profession is akin to an elite priesthood, but health care isn't the only place that attitude exists. I have contacts that have confirmed that attitude is rampant among many biology and physics Ph.D.s.

Such priesthoods exist everywhere, in a wide spectrum of fields. Our current cultural-political system pretty much demands that people specialize themselves and become experts in one thing and refer to experts for everything else. Don't question the experts (in other fields); they know what's best. Be a good cog in the machine! The machine doesn't like cogs that ask the wrong questions.

You have a J.D. if I recall correctly, so I do expect you would know more about the landscape in the legal field.

Judges and Illinois ballots 2004

Re: Biased; Useful in Context

Re: Biased; Useful in Context