Deadline is today to file for Associate Judge

As if 2022 Cook County judicial candidates didn't already have enough on their plates, given that petition filing opens in Springfield Monday morning, the deadline to electronically file for the 10 announced Cook County associate judge vacancies is tonight at 11:59 p.m. (If mailed or hand-delivered, the deadline is today at 5:00 p.m.).

Nevertheless, you can bet your last farthing that a great many judicial hopefuls will take time from arranging their petitions to also submit applications. There will be a lot of names on both candidate lists.

Mine won't be on either of them.

I will admit that, when the current AJ vacancies were announced so soon after the last class was sworn in, I was a bit intrigued.

As Adlai Stevenson III famously said, in August 1985, when asked whether he would run against Gov. James Thompson again in 1986, "I have to say the sap is rising."

Stevenson's bucolic reference was entirely appropriate -- and completely, and deliberately, misunderstood.

And that was long before Twitter.

I haven't entirely lost interest in one day serving as a judge. But I have long since lost interest in hopeless quests. There may well be one "old person" slot in this next AJ class; there often seems to be one. But I have no assurance -- no expectation -- not even a suggestion -- that I might be chosen for that spot. And I don't really want to count up the number of times I've applied since 2000 -- and never even got to the short list.

Mind you, I don't pine for the days when one would get a life-changing phone call from the Fifth Floor. I've been around for long enough that I have met some of those who got that call. I even know someone who claims to have gotten that call, and turned the opportunity down.

(Yeah, I'm skeptical, too. But... fact is... Illinois judicial salaries were not always as generous as they are now.)

In any event, I would never have gotten such a call. If such calls were still made, I'd never get such a call. Why should I be nostalgic for that?

But I'm pretty sure that no one individual can realistically make such a phone call today. For even one candidate. I'm also pretty sure that a lot of my brother and sister lawyers have been assured otherwise. I wish them all well. Even though I know that only disappointment awaits for most.

I'll put up the AJ applicant list as soon as I can.