Updated Alliance ratings released today

The Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Screening has released updated judicial candidate ratings this afternoon. Translated from the Journalism 101-speak, that means the remaining blanks have been filled in the Alliance grids.

Published below is the key to reading the evaluations. A list of the participating bar associations follows at the end of this post.
Candidates who did not participate in the rating process are automatically found either "not qualified" or "not recommended." The "not evaluated" rating means that a bar group was unable to evaluate that individual.

In an email accompanying the grids, Joyce Williams, who coordinates the ratings process for the Alliance of Bar Associations, asked me to stress that these the Alliance Bar Associations are providing ratings and not endorsements. She also also advised that, although the Alliance does not make special note of those candidates who refuse to participate in the screening process, there were 17 such candidates in this election cycle.

I haven't counted up the numbers of candidates who tallied no support from any bar association; this will give me something to do on the train home tonight.

But, in the meantime, here are the updated "grids" (please click to enlarge each image):








The Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Screening is comprised of the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Chicago Area (AABA), Black Women Lawyers’ Association of Greater Chicago (BWLA), Chicago Council of Lawyers (CCL), Cook County Bar Association (CCBA), Decalogue Society of Lawyers (DSL), Hellenic Bar Association (HBA), Illinois State Bar Association (ISBA), Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago (LAGBAC), Puerto Rican Bar Association of Illinois (PRBA), and Women’s Bar Association of Illinois (WBAI) working collaboratively to improve the process of screening judicial candidates in Cook County, Illinois.

In her email this afternoon, Ms. Williams wrote, "These ratings represent countless hours of investigation, evaluation, and final determination of and by the lawyers who have volunteered their time in this endeavor to educate the public in putting qualified men and women in the judiciary. The work was not taken lightly by the Alliance members and should not be perceived as capricious."

I'm putting this statement at the end of this post not because I think it unimportant -- but because this way the reader sees it right before the comments start.