But our system here for choosing those judges is arbitrary. The reality is that voting for judges can be overwhelming, with confusion over what the courts are, what endorsements mean and the sheer number of names that appear on the ballot.
In fact, according to a study commissioned by Better Civics this year, almost 20 percent of all Philadelphia voters choose not to vote for judges. We focused on candidates for Municipal Court and Court of Common Pleas , as they are typically the judges anyone encounters when interacting with our local judicial system.
If a candidate is not recommended by the Bar, it could be for a number of reasons, including not having enough courtroom experience, having an ethical controversy or simply not submitting their application in time, based on when they decided to run. Reading through these judicial profiles is a great first step. We encourage you to dig deeper. Do more research. Ask more questions. Our goal, in addition to educating voters, is to create a demand for more transparent and accessible access to judicial candidates and their platforms.
We believe that when voters are more informed, we make better choices and can demand a shift in voting culture that normalizes accountability. For the rest, we culled information from their websites.
This court is responsible for hearing criminal and civil cases, including those involving families and children; hearing appeals from the minor courts and appeals not exclusively assigned to another court; and holding civil, criminal and jury trials.
Sample court cases include divorce, property division, alimony, custody and child support, paternity and protection orders. Wendi Barish , Democrat. Barish has a background in employment and civil rights law, and now oversees legal matters for PHA, including issues related to protests over homelessness and police reform. A Democratic Committeeperson since , she ran unsuccessfully for judge in and She has served on the boards of several nonprofits, including The Wardrobe and Settlement Music School.
I have great respect for the law and feel passionate about applying it equitably and equally. There are several ways I would strive to improve our system of justice. I would do so by recognizing my implicit bias and not allowing it to impact my impartiality. I would also set the tone in the courtroom and ensure all people are treated with respect. In addition, I would continue to be a legal scholar and not render decisions without being fully acquainted with the relevant law.
Finally, I would demonstrate the utmost regard for all judicial codes of conduct and ethics. Monica N. Gibbs , Democrat. A Philadelphia native, Gibbs is an attorney with a background in civil and criminal litigation. Chris Hall , Democrat. For the past 15 years, Chris Hall has had his own white collar criminal defense and government litigation practice. That is why I am running to serve as a Judge on the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas—to ensure equal justice is served for all and to fight systemic racism and sexism within the judicial system.
Academics may enjoy debating whether a judge should consider the joint committee reports found in legislative history when interpreting the meaning of a statute, or whether a judge should give a high level of deference to an administrative agency, but these issues are not particularly interesting—or relevant—to the average voter. Instead, voters are likely to care about results on particular issues. Does the judge tend to interpret the law to encourage individual plaintiffs who seek damages against large corporations, or does he tend to protect the corporations from such lawsuits?
If voters care about results, we can provide them with the specific results a judge is likely to give them on specific issues. And although judges are understandably reluctant to provide information about how they would vote on certain issues, they necessarily leave a track record with every case they decide, just as legislators leave a paper trail with the votes they cast in the legislature. By collecting data on how these judges vote, we can begin to perceive patterns in how they tend to vote in certain kinds of cases, and by communicating these patterns to the electorate, we can ensure that voters are making informed decisions about how they want their judges to vote in cases where the law may be ambiguous or unsettled.
The danger to this method, of course, is that judges will become little more than politicians, who are evaluated on the popularity of the policy decisions that they make instead of the quality of the legal analysis they conduct. There are two responses to this critique. First, judges in most cases are bound by the law to reach a certain result, and therefore the majority of decisions a judge makes are unaffected by his or her ideology or policy preferences.
If a particularly partisan judge ignores the law in order to reach a specific result, he or she will almost certainly be outvoted by the other judges on the panel—and if not, the decision will certainly be overturned on appeal. So the judicial system provides an effective check on judges who may be tempted to reach decisions for political rather than legal reasons. But more fundamentally, it seems a little late to worry about the risk that judges will turn into politicians.
Thirty-nine states require at least some of their judges to stand for popular election, a strong majority of Americans consistently tell pollsters that judges should be elected. This means that judges in these states are already politicians—politicians with a different role to play than legislators or executives, but politicians nonetheless. And if we expect the voters in these states to make informed decisions about the type of judge they would like to have on the bench, voters should know how the judges are likely to vote in those close cases where the law gives them the leeway to show their policy preferences.
Choose Your Judges is a non-partisan organization dedicated to increasing voter awareness in judicial elections. If you have any comments or feedback about the site, please let us know. Take the Quiz. But there would be little controversy about what kind of information you should transmit to the voter, and the information would be relatively easy to gather: incumbents will have clear voting records on most of these issues, and every candidate will have made public statements on these issues in speeches, in their campaign literature, or in response to questions from the media Now imagine that you have been given the same task in an upcoming judicial election.
How do voters currently decide whom to vote for in judicial elections? How do I register to vote? How do I request a ballot? When do I vote? When are polls open? Who Represents Me? Congress special elections Governors State executives State legislatures Ballot measures State judges Municipal officials School boards. Other methods of judicial selection include: assisted appointment , gubernatorial appointment , and legislative elections. To read more about how these selection methods are used across the country, click here.
The following states elect their justices in partisan elections :. The following states elect their justices in nonpartisan elections :. The following states use retention elections for subsequent terms:. The following states elect their justices using the Michigan-Ohio method :. The following states elect their judges in partisan elections :. While most states conduct their elections in even-numbered years, the following states may elect judges in odd-numbered years as well.
Pennsylvania is the one state that only elects judges in odd-numbered years. For more judicial election details, click on the name of a state, or visit Portal:Judicial elections. Each state has a unique set of guidelines governing how they select judges at the state and local level. These methods of selection are:. At the founding of the United States, all states selected judges through either gubernatorial or legislative appointments. New York followed suit in , and a national shift occurred as states joined them.
By the time the Civil War began in , 24 of the 34 states had an elected judiciary, and every state that achieved statehood after the Civil War provided for the election of some—if not all—of its judges. Initially, all judicial elections were partisan. But as time went on, public trust in elected judiciaries wavered, and citizens who viewed the courts as overrun by machine politics began looking for alternative methods. Groups such as the Progressives , the American Bar Association , and the American Judicature Society led an effort to restore what they called "the traditional respect for the bench," which they said had been lost.
One other popular selection method was the nonpartisan election of judges , first implemented by Cook County, Illinois in By not including party affiliation on the ballot, supporters argued, divisive partisan interests would find no footing in state and local selection processes.
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