Typically I go through the list of the Judicial Performance Review and look at how the judges have been rated and if the commissioners believe they meet or do not meet the performance standards. This is where I started this evening and then I did a little googling, got completely frustrated, and after way too much time (2 hours at least!) I have fallen back to my original stance on the judges up for retention in Arizona. I'm only worried about the ones inMaricopa county so here goes, these are the ones I'm giving the boot to:
(Judges are ranked on Legal Ability, Integrity, Communication Skills, Judicial Temperament, Administrative Performance, Settlement Activities, and Administrative Skills. I consider anything less than a "B" poor for a judge, and certainly a "B"avg across the board is of concern. There are 29 commissioners that vote yes or no to keep them.)
Akers, Linda A. 73% on Judicial temperament and 3 commissioners voted no.
Ballinger, Eddward Pl Jr. I actually saw a sign on this guy saying to vote him out. He has high reviews, but this website quotes a lawyer that says, "If he doesn't like your case, he's terrible."
Gentry-Lewis, Jo Lynn Mostly 80%'s, 78% legal ability, 6 com. voted no. She's very active in native American causes though so I'm not positive on this one.
McClennen, Crane 89, 84, 78, 60, 70, 80% with 17 commissioners voting not to keep him. This was a no brainer in my book until I read from the same website above that he was tough on sloppy attorneys and was one of the smartest judges on the bench. Then I thought about it again and again and discussed it with Bill and thought, "should a juvenile court attorney really be that uptight about the way his court is run?" Should we punish kids because their lawyers aren't up to this judge's standards even though they are fine in any other courtroom? I also thought should I believe 2 obviously conservative blog sites that tell me he should stay? What would a conservative judge act like in a juvenile court room? I don't know for sure but I have a few suspicions. Bottom line, I'm giving him the boot!
Oberbillig, Robert H. 85% JT, 79% Settlement, 4 com. voted no.
Padilla, Jose S. all the attorneys gave him 85-95% reviews, but witnesses ect. gave him 60-75%. He's a family court judge so these witnesses were probably very passionate. 3 com. voted no.
Steinle, Roland J. III 71% in JT, 4 com. voted no.
Seriously, I've given this 3 hours now and it probably won't do a bit of good. Judges are not elected into office and it would take a whole lot of us to vote them out of office. I guess that's why I kept researching. The judges are the ones that uphold the law and we really should watch what they are doing. It shouldn't be a club that they all belong to where nobody really says what they think. Maybe McClennen is being unfairly voted out because he wants things done right, I don't know for sure. I do know that I'm going to ere on the side of the kids.
Now I'm going to go join my husband and watch a marathon of Raising the Bar. A fake show that I can get even more riled up about lawyers and judges. La La. Maybe I'll keep googling on the laptop. The problem with google and blog sites is that you find people like me that don't really know what they're talking about. I'm seriously going to volunteer to be part of the Judicial Performance Review committee next go around. Maybe then I'll have a clue as to what really happens.
Here's an interesting quote from John McCain's website on his judicial philosophy: When applying the law, the role of judges is not to impose their own view as to the best policy choices for society but to faithfully and accurately determine the policy choices already made by the people and embodied in the law. The judicial role is necessarily limited and one that requires restraint and humility. As he said to the Federalist Society at the 2006 Convention, "[Judges] should be people who are humbled by their role in our system, not emboldened by it. Our freedom is curtailed no less by an act of arbitrary judicial power as it is by an act of arbitrary executive, or legislative, or state power."
2 comments:
Adam was telling Clint the other day that a lot of those judges need to be voted out, but us as the voting public have no idea what agenda they're pushing, and just vote yes all the way down the ballot. It sucks that they're kept in their job because we're (not you obviously) so ignorant.
I believe that you need to vote NO if you want to remove the judge from office. The question is shall they be retained in office? Yes if you want them, no to give them the boot. I think I'll vote no on the ones I listed and leave the rest blank. In years past I've voted no straight down the ticket. And now I've determined that leaving things blank are a lot better than voting ignorantly. I'm leaving several on the seats open because I don't know who these people are.
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