The Interdependent Third Branch
Tracking court organization, administration, structure, and strategy
Judge Paul Moore, who is alleged to have doctored his state judicial evaluations, resigned yesterday. The resignation is effective immediately.
No word yet on what will become of the formal complaint against Judge Moore, which was last month by the state’s Supreme Court Committee on Judicial Conduct.
There is currently an effort in Santa Clara, California, to recall Aaron Persky, the Superior Court judge who gave an extraordinarily light sentence to former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner last summer after Turner was found guilty of sexual assault. Persky sentenced Turner to six months in county jail, far short of the recommendations of prosecutors, after Turner was found to have sexually assaulted a drunk and unconscious woman behind a dumpster.
Turner’s actions were hideous, and it is certainly understandable why a light sentence would be greeted with surprise and even outrage. And Judge Persky’s standard defense–that any challenge to his discretion would compromise judicial independence–sounds almost ridiculous in this context. But the recall effort is still a terrible idea.
Continue reading “Some thoughts on the effort to recall Judge Aaron Persky”
The legislature-approved salary increase of 4 percent over two years was in line with Governor Scott Walker’s recommendation, but far below the 16 percent increase requested by Chief Justice Patience Roggensack. The Wisconsin judiciary currently ranks 43rd nationwide in judicial pay.
Many states conduct periodic performance evaluations of their judges, either for internal education and improvement, or to educate voters in advance of judicial retention elections, or both. No state formally evaluates judicial candidates along the same criteria — a process I have called prospective performance evaluation — but the task is so important that local and state bar associations sometimes undertake it themselves.
The Philadelphia Bar Association recently unveiled their new evaluation process for judicial candidates, and it is impressively thorough — much more than this local news report suggests. The standards set forth by the Philly Bar are carefully done and well worth a review by voters and court observers alike.
The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) has published Transparent Courthouse Revisited: An Updated Blueprint for Judicial Performance Evaluation. The document significantly updates a 2006 edition of the same publication. It draws on best practices from around the country on evaluation commissions, the evaluation process, reaching recommendations, funding, and disseminating results. It’s an important read for anyone interested in state courts and judicial performance evaluation (JPE).
More on the IAALS Quality Judges Initiative here.
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