Judges receiving "yes" votes from more than 60% of the voters answering the question (60% + 1) are retained; any judges falling below that mark would have to look for work elsewhere.
What follows are the "grids" published by the Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Screening, showing side-by-side comparisons of ratings issued by each of the 12 Alliance members for each of the many retention candidates.
As readers will note, when looking at these grids, nearly all the Alliance bar groups agree that nearly all the judges on the ballot deserve to remain in office. (Click on the images below to enlarge or clarify.)
FWIW is aware of a number of judges who were up for retention but who declined to be screened because they were planning to retire. Pierce has retired, but apparently his announcement did not come soon enough to prevent the publication of the negative ratings. (Pierce has also withdrawn from the ballot.)
Insofar as FWIW can determine, Collins remains on the November retention ballot.
Only three other judges received negative ratings from any Alliance members at all. Judge William H. Hooks received "Yes" recommendations from every bar group except the ISBA. Judge Leonard Murray received "Yes" recommendations from every Alliance member except Chicago’s LGBTQ+ Bar Association (LAGBAC). Judge Rossana Patricia Fernandez received "Yes" recommendations from eight of the 12 Alliance groups, but the not the ISBA, Decalogue Society, Hellenic Bar Association, or LAGBAC.
The Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Screening consists of the Arab American Bar Association (AABAR), the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Chicago Area (AABA), the Black Women Lawyers’ Association of Greater Chicago (BWLA), the Chicago Council of Lawyers (CCL), the Cook County Bar Association (CCBA), the Decalogue Society of Lawyers (DSL), the Hellenic Bar Association of Illinois (HBA), the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois (HLAI), the Illinois State Bar Association (ISBA), Chicago’s LGBTQ+ Bar Association (LAGBAC), the Puerto Rican Bar Association (PRBA), and the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois (WBAI), all working collaboratively to improve the process of screening judicial candidates in Cook County, Illinois.
The Chicago Bar Association conducts a separate evaluation process for retention candidates. FWIW will have those ratings, too, when they are available.
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3 comments:
Wow. Several people got some very serious free passes. What little respect I had for the bar associations has evaporated into the ether. Several of these people had no business being on the bench and only proved it through their performance since being elected. It’s a good thing for them that so many of the bar JEC’s are comprised of boot-licking associate judge wannabes who will to anything to curry favor.
@Anon 9/24 at 10:46 a.m. -- Aren't you nice?
As a former judicial evaluations committee member for number of years, I can unequivocally state that anonymous post 9/24 is bunch of uninformed nonsense. I saw zero notion or evidence of Volunteers on these committees viewing their duties as "way to curry favor" and do not recall such service ever being used by anyone to later gain an edge in seeking to join the bench. Rather, I and others like me worked hard and put in many hours to Independently investigate and evaluate each and every candidate in good faith, probing further as needed. We took our job seriously and number of times there were split decisions and the like within committee evaluations.
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