I have no idea what you’re talking about here.
Judge Corrigan’s dissent was from a majority decision that the plaintiff’s claims were time-barred. She would have held that the Legislature intended to keep the claims alive.
In other words, Corrigan would have ruled that the plaintiffs CAN sue. The majority ruled they cannot.
Can you explain what you meant?
Obviously not. I appreciate the correction.
This suggests that as a first approximation, one should vote no on all judges.
If there’s one that is that close to not being approved, then (s)he’s probably a very bad judge?
Ballotpedia is a starting point, as mentioned. But they tend to not have much on Judicial candidates. You can look in the endorsements section. (But here in Minnesota, like some other states, political parties tend to avoid endorsing in Judicial races.)
You can look at what other elected officials have endorsed them, but they too tend to avoid endorsing in these races. But you can look at their past experience. Many of them have served in the Attorney General’s office. If they served under a Democratic or Republican AG (especially if they were not in the office before that), they are probably in that party.
Also look at who appointed them. Both Democratic & Republican Governors tend to appoint people of their own party as Judges, and because of the low attention, they tend to appoint peopke more radical than themselves as Judges.
Most Judicial elections are uncontested. When there is a contest, there is usually enough controversy that searching the web will find info on it. [In my ballot this year, there wer only 2 contested judicial races out of 2 dozen+ elections. Research showed me that the incumbents were better in both cases; the challengers were what I call ‘nut cases’.]
I voted this morning, and one of the persons on the ballot running for judge is known to me personally. She was running unopposed. I didn’t vote for her. She’ll never get a vote or any other form of approval from me. Here’s why:
A few years back, I was involved in a trial where she played a small part. It was a very gnarly sexual assault trial, a father who raped his daughter repeatedly for years, with a lot of behind-the-scenes ugliness. The defense lawyer was an absolute reptile.
One of the bits of behind-the-scenes nastiness was this: the defense lawyer had the victim come to his office and persuaded her to sign a statement saying that nothing had ever happened, in exchange for Mom (who had taken the father’s side in this mess) letting the victim go live with her aunt in another city. He actually surreptitiously tape-recorded the conversation. And the lawyer who is currently running for judge was the victim’s ad litem in the CPS case against her father. So basically, as the ad litem, she let her client go to the office of the attorney representing her rapist and left the room so they could have a conversation in private.
I honestly can’t believe she still has her license. And now she’s unopposed for county court at law judge. Of course, she’s running under her husband’s name, which is Hispanic, rather than the name she kept professionally when she got married, which is Arabic-sounding, because I guess that wouldn’t play well in Republican Texas.
Good on you for desiring info, but good luck on finding anything useful. Yes, the bar associations are the best/only source - but it takes A LOT for them to declare a judge unqualified.
You can try to see if a judge appears in the news - but a judge’s actions in a single case may say little about their overall competence.
I generally leave them blank. In my jurisdiction, they generally run unopposed, and are generally of a political affiliation other than mine.
Any attempt to distinguish them tends to rely on factors that likely have little to do with their competence. Say, you want to vote in more women. Or more minorities. Or you want to vote fore/against certain church members. Well, minority women can be incompetent as easily as men. And you may not wish to elect a mediocre woman over a superstar male.
I say this as a lawyer married to a lawyer, both with 30+ years experience, and having been a (non-elected) administrative law judge the past 8 years. If I don’t have personal knowledge of an individual judge - favorable or un-, I leave it blank.
I think it pretty reprehensible that we elect judges, especially in partisan elections.
In California, where the OP (and some of the rest of us) live, we don’t elect judges that way.
Judges are appointed, but need to be approved by the voters. So, for each judge, we can either vote yes or no, but there aren’t multiple prospective judges running for a single office.
Cool. Sorry for my ignorance. I’ll do a little research on how that is done. Who appoints them, etc.
Here in Chicago, it is often a joke, and depressingly hard to discern the wheat from the chaff.
Looks like the governor appoints them (I had to look it up).
And I guess that’s only for the CA Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal.
CA Superior court judges run for office like other politicians.