Voting in Judicial Retention Elections

Voter Response to Salient Judicial Decisions in Retention Elections is an interesting article by Yale Professor Allison P. Harris. Among its points:

"Appointed judges are generally accountable to whichever branch of government (executive or legislative) they rely on for appointment and reappointment. Citizens can hold elected judges accountable with their votes. However, most of the factors driving voter participation in judicial elections are associated with partisan and competitive, rather than retention, elections.
Nonpartisan uncontested judicial retention elections occur in many states for a variety of types of courts.
However, they are especially common in states, like Iowa, that have adopted the Missouri Plan, also referred to as merit selection, for the selection and retention of judges."

"High-profile campaigns against judges running for retention, like the one in Iowa in 2010, are not the norm, and most campaigns will not achieve their goal of removing judges from the bench. But justice removal is not the only reason we should be interested in campaigns against retention and shifts in retention race results. If voters are the only ones who can punish or reward Missouri Plan judges after appointment, then it is important to understand the factors related to shifts in participation in these races. The results of analyses presented in this article suggest that we need to take greater care in evaluating the extent to which judges who run in retention elections are independent from voters. Voters do respond to salient decisions and mobilization in retention races. Even if the judges running in these elections are ultimately retained because more of the voters cast yes votes than no votes, they are not as independent from voters as opponents of retention elections often argue."

New Jersey Judicial Retention

New Jersey's Supreme Court justices have more secure positions than high court judges in nearly any other state. While most states' supreme court justices retain their seats only if they win re-election or re-appointment every several years, New Jersey's justices are nominated by the governor and confirmed by the Senate for an initial 7-year term, after which the governor may renominate the justice, subject to Senate consent, for a position until age 70.

The judicial independence fostered by this long-term seems wise to me. However, some NJ legislators have proposed a constitutional amendment that in the words of NJ.com "would have voters give them a thumbs-up or thumbs-down every four years." In other words, retention elections, in which the incumbent faces no opposing candidate but must simply win a majority of yes (rather than no) votes. Nearly all judges around the country win retention elections.

Stephen Ware on TV Discussing Judicial Retention Elections -- Kansas Supreme Court

Kansas Supreme Court judicial retention elections discussed on 6 News, Lawrence, Kansas. Appearances by KU Law Professor Stephen Ware, Amy James, president of Kansans for Justice, and Ryan Wright, executive director of Kansans for Fair Courts.

Kansas Supreme Court Retention Election Campaign Material

NY Times Depicts Kansas Battle as Judicial Independence vs. Politicized Courts

Predictably-progressive oversimplifications by the Times include "In the Kansas system, judges are appointed by the governor," The Times fails to mention the bar's extraordinarily large role in selecting Kansas Supreme Court justices and the politicization that produces.

Retention Elections Unconstitutional in North Carolina

A 2015 North Carolina statute tried to change judicial retention from contestable elections (2 or more candidates) to retention elections (yes or no vote on retaining the incumbent). As the News & Observer puts it, the "law gives most sitting justices the option to be re-elected to additional eight-year terms without head-to-head matchups with challengers. Instead, the justice can choose to be elected in an up-or-down vote." The Superior Court held this unconstitutional.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article61153192.html#storylink=cpy

North Carolina Supreme Court Switches to Retention Elections

North Carolina judges are initially selected in contestable elections and most must prevail in contestable elections to win another term of office. But a new law allows NC Supreme Court justices to secure another term by merely winning a retention election, in which voters choose whether or not to retain the justice but there is no opposing candidate. Nationally, judges nearly always win retention elections.

Judges' Impose Tougher Sentences When Nearing Re-Election or Retention Vote

"Judges are more likely to hand out harsh sentences, including death, the closer they get to a re-election or retention election campaign," concludes Kate Berry of the Brennan Center.

Her study, How Judicial Elections Impact Criminal Cases, "looked at 10 empirical studies examining whether and how judicial elections impact criminal justice outcomes. These studies, conducted across states, court levels, and type of elections, all found that proximity to re-election made judges more likely to impose longer sentences, affirm death sentences, and even override sentences of life imprisonment to impose the death penalty."

Ted Cruz Wants Retention Elections for US Supreme Court

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) proposes subjecting US Supreme Court justices to periodic retention elections, that is, referenda in which citizens choose yes or no whether to the keep the justice or create a vacancy, which would be filled in the usual manner.

This idea is sensibly criticized by George Will,

New Mexico Judicial Selection

According to the Albuqurque Journal:

House Judiciary Chairman Zachary Cook, R-Ruidoso, has introduced House Joint Resolution 11, which would ask voters to amend the state constitution to eliminate partisan elections of judges. It would not apply to magistrates and justices of the peace, but would apply to state Supreme Court justices, and Court of Appeals, District Court and Metropolitan Court judges.
Currently, judges in those four courts are appointed by the governor from lists of candidates selected by a bipartisan nominating commission chaired by the dean of the University of New Mexico School of Law.
Then, however, they must run in one partisan election, where they often face an opponent who has avoided the vetting of the nominating commission.
After that, judges face only nonpartisan retention elections. Voters in those elections have the benefit of reviews by the Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission.
Cook’s resolution eliminates the partisan election step, which is a major flaw in a merit system.

New Mexico Judge Alan Malott writes:

in the late 1970s, New Mexico elected its judges through ordinary partisan elections. Not surprisingly, the dominant political party produced most of the sitting judges statewide. In 1988, voters approved a constitutional amendment that substituted a hybrid system for purely partisan elections.

This system provides that a judge is initially appointed by the governor, after being screened by a bipartisan nominating commission. But the judge must take on all comers in the next general election cycle, often only a few weeks or months after his or her appointment.

If successful in that partisan contest, the judge is subject to nonpartisan retention elections every six years and remains in office if 57 percent of the voters want to keep them there.

Kansas Judicial Retention Elections

As I noted in October, The Kansas Republican Party's chairman and GOP Gov. Sam Brownback encouraged voters to remove two of the court's seven justices in the Nov. 4 election.  The two, Justices Lee Johnson and Eric Rosen, both appointed by former Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, kept their jobs but won less than 53 percent of the vote.

Previously, no Kansas justice had received a "yes" vote of less than 62 percent and that was in 2010, when the anti-abortion group Kansans for Life waged a "fire Beier" campaign against Justice Carol Beier.

As Brad Cooper of the KC Star writes, "Some scholars attribute the increasing profile of retention elections to the way states like Kansas pick judges. The say those systems, which employ a screening process for candidates, are influenced too much by lawyers with liberal inclinations."  
 
What is this screening process and what role does it give lawyers? 

 As Cooper writes, "Supreme Court justices in Kansas are appointed by the governor, who chooses from a panel of three candidates recommended by a screening panel made up of five lawyers and four nonlawyers."  

What is crucial, however, is that those five lawyers are selected in a shockingly undemocratic way.  They are selected in elections open to only about 10,000 people in the state: the members of the Kansas Bar. No other state allows its bar to select a majority of its nominating commission.  Kansas Supreme Court selection is undemocratic and extreme.

I'm not sure about Cooper's statement that "About half the states choose Supreme Court judges using screening committees similar to Kansas’ system." Perhaps this means only that about the half states have a nominating commission, but the keys are:

1. Is if there is a nominating commission, then who selects its members.  Who picks the pickers? 

2. Is the nominating commission able to ensure that one of its nominees joins the court or is the governor's choice among those nominees subject to senate confirmation which, if denied, may require the commission to nominate someone else.

California Supreme Court Appointments by Governor Jerry Brown

California's supreme court nominating process is an unusual form of democratic appointment because the governor's nominees are confirmed, not by the state senate, but by a three-person "Commission on Judicial Appointments" comprised of the state's Chief Justice, Attorney General, and a senior presiding justice of the state's Court of Appeal. 

But it is still democratic appointment so it functions well to gradually move the court left or right with the long-term inclinations of the citizenry.  And if the court moves too far for the citizenry's tastes, the voters can remove judges at a retention election, which is what happened the first time Jerry Brown was governor of California.  As the NY Times puts it, "he set out to reshape the powerful California Supreme Court by appointing its first female chief justice. But his pick, Rose Bird, had never served as a judge before and came to be perceived as a liberal ideologue. Ms. Bird, along with two other judges Mr. Brown named to the court, was recalled by voters in an election in 1986."

It is now nearly 40 years later and Brown is again governor and again has named three people to the seven-member Supreme Court — the latest confirmed on Monday.  Of these three, the NY Times writes,  "not one had a day of judicial experience: Two are law professors and the third is an associate attorney general in the Justice Department. They are all graduates of the same law school — Yale — which also counts among its alumni a California lawyer who made a career in politics, Mr. Brown.

Mr. Brown’s most recent choice, Leondra R. Kruger, the associate attorney general, lives in Washington and has never practiced law in California."

More from the Times "Under California law, the governor nominates justices, and, assuming they are approved by the commission, they appear on the ballot every 12 years for an up-or-down vote."

Other views of California judicial selection including Brown's nominee's to the CA SCT.

Do Judges Ever Lose Retention Elections?

Sitting judges nearly always win retention elections because such elections have no opposing candidates. The voters merely get to choose whether to retain this judge and most voters have never heard of most judges on the ballot. However, the rare judge sometimes loses even this sort of election.  It just happened in Arizona for the first time since 1978.

Campaign Finance Law for Judicial Retention Elections

Kansas does not require financial disclosures by groups seeking to influence retention elections, according to ProPublica.

Retention Elections for Kansas Supreme Court

The Kansas Republican Party's chairman and GOP Gov. Sam Brownback last week endorsed efforts by group of crime victims, Kansans for Justice, to get voters to remove two of the court's seven justices in the Nov. 4 election, AP reports.  The two, Justices Lee Johnson and Eric Rosen, were appointed by former Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

As in other states, judges almost never lose retention elections in Kansas, the story continues: "Previously, elections haven't been much of a threat to justices' careers. Since the state stopped electing them to the bench in 1960, voters haven't removed any justice. None has received a "yes" vote of less than 62 percent. But the lowest margins were recorded in 2010, when the anti-abortion group Kansans for Life waged a "fire Beier" campaign against Justice Carol Beier."

Retention elections, with no opposing candidate, are designed to be easy for incumbents to win, as I explain more toward the end of this law review article

KS Gov. Brownback Endorses Removal of Kansas Supreme Court Justices

Republican Gov. Sam Brownback said he's voting against retaining state Supreme Court Justices Lee Johnson and Eric Rosen.  In contrast, most Kansas lawyers and judges want to retain them, according to a survey by a committee of bar leaders and leaders of progressive groups such as Kansas Appleseed, Mainstream Coalition, and League of Women Voters.

This has long been the pattern around the country.  When judges are controversial, it's usually conservatives who want to remove them, while progressives and the bench and bar want to retain them.  That was true in Iowa a few years on same-sex marriage and also true going back at least as far as California's Rose Bird in the 1980's.

Tennessee Judicial Retention Elections and Judicial Selection Amendment 2

Tennessee Judicial Retention Elections and Amendment 2 (under which that the governor would appoint Tennessee appellate court judges, subject to legislative confirmation) are the subject of an upcoming Federalist Society event involving speakers:

John Ryder, Harris Shelton Hanover Walsh, PLLC, and General Counsel of the Republican National Committee

Prof. Steve Mulroy, University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law

Hosted by the Memphis Lawyers Chapter     

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's Recommended Process for Judicial Selection and Retention

Retired US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has released her recommended process for selecting and retaining state court judges. 

Justice O'Connor has worked closely with IAALS, the Institute for Advancement of the American Legal System.  The IAALS/O'Connor plan:

"calls for a judicial nominating commission to screen applicants and identify the best qualified candidates, appointment by the governor of one of those candidates, broad-based and objective evaluation of judges’ performance on the bench, and periodic retention elections in which voters have access to judicial performance evaluation results and are able to vote for or against the sitting judge."

In short, it's the usual Missouri Plan or nominating commission system and, to the credit of Justice O'Connor and IAALS, they avoid calling it "merit selection." Unfortunately, they do not answer the key question: who picks the pickers?  In other words, who selects the nominating commission?  

Judicial Retention Elections in Alaska

Covered by Alaska Public Media:

The Alaska Judicial Council has released its recommendations for retention elections this November: "13 of 14 state judges have been given the thumbs up. But one judge, William Estelle, who sits on the bench in Palmer, has not gained Judicial Council approval."

“Judge Estelle filed 16 untrue affidavits, under oath, from September 2011 through February, 2013, swearing that he had completed or issued decisions in all matters that had been pending before him, for more than six months, when in fact, he had not completed those decisions,”

Tennessee Judicial Retention Drama

In August, Tennessee voters will be asked to retain or replace three Supreme Court justices.  NPR says: "The Tennessee Bar Association is all but endorsing three Supreme Court justices sitting for retention elections this year. The group released a poll Friday showing 90 percent of respondents favor keeping the court as it is. The Bar has a policy of not making endorsements in judicial elections. It’s never even polled its members until this year. The association wanted to counter an effort by Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey to unseat three justices appointed by Democrats."

Dahlia Lithwick weighs in.