Alliance grids released for countywide judicial candidates

The casual voter will happen upon this post, read through it, and wonder: Where are all the candidates?

This is it, folks. (All the countywide judicial candidates, anyway. We'll get to the subcircuit candidates in the next post -- but a word of caution to you, Mr. or Ms. Casual Voter: If you live in Cook County, you live in but one of 20 Subcircuits. You may have one vacancy to fill in your subcircuit; you may have none. If you live in the 13th Subcircuit, you will find four vacancies... but only four candidates. No choices. Also: Every single one of the candidates seeking judgeships in Cook County in 2026 is doing so in a Democratic Primary. There is not one Republican candidate. There is no 'two party system' here.)

Let's start with the one and only candidate for the Hoffman vacancy on the Illinois Appellate Court, namely, Judge Judith C. Rice. Here are her Alliance ratings:

The ratings issued by each of the 13 bar associations that together comprise the Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Screening are found in the hieroglyphics beneath the abbrieviated names of the member bar groups. (I'll give you the full names of all 13 if you stay with me until the end here.) The Alliance provides a ratings key so that you may decipher the meanings of these hieroglyphics. Here it is:

Still with me? Alright, then, herewith the sparse crop of countywide candidates for vacancies on the Circuit Court of Cook County and their Alliance ratings (click to enlarge or clarify the images):

By the way, my grousing about the minuscule number of candidates is not meant to infer or suggest anything negative about any of these persons individually. It strikes me, however, that the failure of more candidates to step forward and seek these vacancies may indicate that something is terribly wrong with our political process generally and, quite possibly, with our judicial system in particular. Why don't more people want to serve as judges? Why aren't more people willing to declare themselves as candidates? These are questions for a different day, but these are questions that must be asked. And answered.

Meanwhile, you've been patient with me and made it to the end of this post. Therefore, as promised, the 13 members of the Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Screening are the Arab American Bar Association (AABAR), the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Chicago Area (AABA), the Black Men Lawyers’ Association (BMLA), 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.