A proposal to eliminate retention elections and performance evaluations for many Arizona judges, scheduled to go to the voters in November, now faces at least one court challenge. Opponents filed suit on Friday, claiming (among other things) that the proposal’s title–the Judicial Accountability Act of 2024–is “deceptive” and “intentionally dishonest.”
Intentionally dishonest, even Orwellian, titles for legislative proposals seem a fixture of our modern politics: I’m looking at you, Inflation Reduction Act. Nevertheless, the substance of the proposal raises a number of very serious concerns, as I discuss here.
Opponents filed the case in Maricopa County Superior Court, whose judges would be directly affected by the proposal’s passage. (All Maricopa County Superior Court judges face periodic evaluations and retention elections under the current system.) Thus we see another example of what I have called “judging when the stakes are personal.” I will be curious whether there is any effort to move the case to smaller county where judges are directly elected and therefore do not have a direct stake in the outcome.
The Interdependent Third Branch 