Cook County judicial voters don't have a lot of choices in this election -- and the few choices they have are only in the Democratic primary -- but there are
some choices to be made: How can voters make good choices?
The best way to determine whether a candidate is worthy of your vote is to know the candidate personally. Hopefully, your personal knowledge of Candidate A will translate into an enthusiastic vote
for Candidate A. If your personal knowledge of Candidate A leads you to support Candidate B, sight unseen, well, that's a problem....
But, alright, it's a big county and you don't know any of the candidates personally. You will have to base your choice on the opinions of others. That's where endorsements and evaluations come in. Endorsements and evaluations are different (at least, they're supposed to be).
Endorsements are frankly political. For example: The Butchers, Bakers, and Candlestick Makers Local 67 encourages a vote for Jane Smith for judge. Smith may be an indifferent legal scholar; she may need Google Maps to find the courthouse, but the union endorses her because it is persuaded that she will be more friendly to the union and its membership than her opponent. That may be because she has strong backing from the Democratic Party or because her mother was a union business agent or because her father plays golf with the chair of the local's political action committee. There are always reasons; we don't always know them. But, if you are a member of the local, or in sympathy with the union, you may be inclined to support Smith, too.
Sometimes a union will post its endorsements online, on a publicly accessible webpage. I have tried to report as many of these as I can find. Some years a union will publicly endorse; some years it will not. For reasons I do not understand, more unions posted endorsements in 2024 than have so far done so in 2026.
I don't really understand why a union would be reluctant to publicize its endorsements. The candidates will boast about every endorsement they can get, from any organization willing to make endorsements, in an effort to show the world that they have broad support. So, it's not as if an endorsement can be kept 'secret.' Now, perhaps, there are unions who are so partisan that some voters may seek out their opinions
just so they can vote against that union's preferred candidates.
The Girl, I Guess Progressive Voter Guide is reflexively anti-police, to the point where its authors have publicly stated an intent to 'pull' any candidate endorsement they make of any candidate who is
also endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police. On the other hand, there may well be voters who will seek out the Girl, I Guess guide in order to vote
against any candidate recommended by the guide.
I would like to think that, in a better world, it would be an advantage for judicial candidates to be endorsed by groups on the opposite ends of the political spectrum. A
legislator who is endorsed by groups left and right is probably too wishy-washy to accomplish anything. Legislatures are supposed be concerned with big-picture things -- with policies and trends. With the future. Legislation should be crafted to cover the usual, expected case.
On the other hand, judges and courts are supposed to be concerned with individual cases and controversies -- including, sometimes, special cases which the big-picture legislation could not take into account. Judges should be concerned more with the present than the future. With the parties before them today. Judges have to follow the laws made by those big-picture legislators, but may be able to ameliorate the harsh or unanticipated consequences of that big-picture law on a deserving party, in a given case. The judge's reputaiton for fairness and impartiality in a given case is what's important here, and groups left and right share, or should share, a common interest in supporting persons like this for the bench.
Let me try and put it another way: When I was in practice, the perfect judge would have been the one who always ruled in my favor. No, I never met one. Even Perry Mason lost
some cases (I read an article once which claimed he lost three in all, but one or more of these may have been eventually reversed). There's a story about Lincoln arguing two cases on the same day in the Illinois Supreme Court. In the first case, he staked out a careful legal position. In the second case, he made a completely contrary argument. One of the justices called Lincoln out on this: "Surely, Mr. Lincoln, you can't expect to win both these cases." Lincoln is supposed to have responded, "No, Your Honor, but I expect to win
one of them." The point is: In the real world, any time a judge always takes a particular lawyer's side, that judge is most likely taking said lawyer's money
on the side.
See, Operation Greylord. So, since I can't hope to have a judge rule my way all the time, the next best thing would be to have a learned judge who will give me a fair hearing in every case. This is why I say a judicial candidate with a good reputation for knowledge and fairness should be able to earn endorsements from groups left and right, even groups as diametrically opposed as Girl, I Guess and the FOP.
But that's a digression. About what I think would be best. To return to the point, the thing to remember about endorsements is that they are political. You may find them helpful anyway.
Now... if endorsements are political, you perhaps expect me to say that
evaluations are
not political.
But that's not entirely true. Most bees and wasps are hive animals. Cows and sheep are herd animals. Human beings are political animals. Anything involving human beings is likely to have at least a political component.
In theory, judicial evaluations (sometimes also called ratings) are supposed to be apolitical. The Chicago Bar Association says that
judicial candidates are evaluated "on the basis of seven criteria: integrity, legal knowledge, legal ability, professional experience, judicial temperament, diligence and punctuality." The
Chicago Council of Lawyers lists 12 similar factors. The CBA evaluates candidates independently; it has conducted judicial evaluations since the 1880s, and adopted its current JEC system back in 1976. The Chicago Council of Lawyers evaluates judicial candidates as a member of the Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Screening. The 13-member Alliance rates judicial candidates "based on detailed information supplied by candidates, a background check by trained lawyers/investigators, and interviews of each candidate. Ratings reflect the Alliance’s opinion of whether candidates have the necessary qualifications for judicial service or ascension to a higher office and are not a reflection of the candidates’ abilities as lawyers or judges." The CBA's process also involves a detailed questionnaire, background checks, and interviews.
Before any interviews take place, extensive materials must be provided by the candidate (not necessarily the
same materials for the CBA as are sought by the Alliance, though there is extensive overlap, and, in any event, not in the same order -- large scale 'copy and paste' from one application to another is simply not an option). In these materials, candidates have the opportunity to provide some references (from people who the candidate assumes will speak favorably, if not glowingly, about the candidate). But they also have to supply adversary references. Candidates must disclose persons who opposed them in different cases... not all of whom will likely have been satisfied with the outcome of their cases... especially if the candidate won. Candidates must list judges before whom they've appeared -- not just judges who've ruled in their favor, but also judges who've ruled against.
For non-lawyers (and perhaps for some lawyers, too, who may not have stopped to think about it), it may be startling to realize that those judicial hopefuls who voluntarily submit to the peer screening process willingly supply most of the rope with which they may be hanged.
Now, all of this sounds carefully non-partisan. And the bar groups want voters to believe -- and I think most bar groups truly believe as well -- that this evaluation process is non-partisan. The Chicago Council of Lawyers, for example, calls itself a "non-partisan entity." But it also states,
on its homepage, that the Council is focused on three major areas, one of which (and, indeed, the first of which) is "[r]esisting the current Administration’s efforts to undermine the Rule of Law and democracy." Even folks who think that total resistance to Trump is a great idea might see just a
teensy-weensy bit of political partisanship in that phraseology. (The Council's third major area of focus is judicial evaluations.)
I don't mean to single out the Council as an example. I would submit that one would not have to scratch the surface of any local bar group very deeply before unearthing a rich vein of partisan political spirit.
Moreover, one need not be a confirmed cynic to at least question whether special interest groups have an outsized interest in the Alliance. After all, in the Alliance, in addition to the Council and the Illinois State Bar Association, one finds three primarily African-American groups (the Black Men Lawyers’ Association, the Black Women Lawyers’ Association of Greater Chicago, and the Cook County Bar Association), two primarily Hispanic groups (the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois and the Puerto Rican Bar Association), Chicago’s LGBTQ+ Bar Association (LAGBAC), the Womens Bar Association of Illinois, and several primarily ethnic bar groups (the Arab American Bar Association, the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Chicago Area, the Decalogue Society of Lawyers, and the Hellenic Bar Association of Illinois).
With all that said, I don't know of a better system than peer review, based as much on adversary interviews as references, for fairly evaluting the credentials of judicial hopefuls.
The reason why our judicial evaluation system, flawed though it may be, is so valuable is that it gives a non-political judicial candidate credibility in an otherwise forbidding political process. By non-political, I do not mean candidates without political opinions -- I merely mean candidates who are not the favorites of the political class (as a practical matter, in Cook County, meaning the Democratic Party, or some significant faction thereof). But this is precisely why our judicial evaluation system must strive to conduct its evaluations on a truly non-partisan basis: If candidates begin to perceive judicial evaluations as just another Party-aligned barrier to judical service, candidates will either not be candidates or, alternatively, if they choose to enter the lists anyway, they will decline to participate in the judicial evaluation process.
And guess what? There is empirical evidence to support the notion that prospective candidates are already behaving just this way. Look how few candidates have come forward in this election cycle. Look at how many of the candidates who have come forward have refused to particpate in the peer review process.
The problem with our peer review process is not so much the design as the implementation: While the Alliance works by pooling its resources for investigation and interviews, neither the Alliance nor the larger CBA is blessed with a surplus of volunteers. Persons with an agenda -- such as demanding certain political positions in exchange for favorable ratings or even rejecting all non-Party sponsored candidates outright -- can exercise a outsized influence in the peer review process
unless they are outnumbered by properly motivated, public-spirited JEC members.
Lawyers, if you want peer review judicial evaluation to work properly, you need to step up and help out.
Meanwhile, voters, judicial evaluations are a useful tool with which to choose among judicial candidates about whom you would otherwise know nothing. Judicial evaluations are not, however, gospel. They can be better. In the future, perhaps, they will be.
Some additional thoughts about judicial evaluations: In some quarters it is thought that a judicial candidate must have unanimously positive bar ratings if he or she is to be considered as any good. At one point, for example, it was my understanding that a single not recommended rating from any bar group would automatically prevent an associate judge candidate from advancing to the short list. But when I started out running for judge, in the 1994 election cycle, there were maybe a half dozen bar groups issuing ratings -- and, even then, not in all races. Now there are at least 14 (some of the suburban bar groups sometimes also issue ratings, but not as part of the Alliance). Maybe it's time to rethink whether a single negative rating should be so terrible. Reasonable people -- and reasonable bar groups -- can differ as their interests and priorities diverge. The fact that the Supreme Court has been willing to appoint persons to temporary vacancies with one or more negative evaluations is encouraging in this regard.
All bar groups suffer from a recency bias: Starting with the questionnaires themselves, the emphasis is on what the candidate is doing now, or in the very recent past. That the candidate may have done far more complicated work in the past is seemingly of no moment; it is difficult for an applicant to even work that in. Readers may notice it in the bar association narratives: "no recent complex litigation" or "lack of recent trial experience" is usually damning, no matter what sorts of cases the candidate handled in the past, or how many trials he or she conducted. Yet, if you read enough of the narratives over time, you will note that some candidates with minimal trial experience can sometimes be found qualified... if they have demonstrated political credentials, possibly. While being a present or former elected official is no guarantee of a favorable rating, it has often seemed to help.
Where or how a candidate practices can be as important to favorable ratings as anything. When I was running for judge in the 1990s, the perception was that assistant state's attorneys had a lock on good ratings. ASAs were rumored to pack the JECs. I can't tell you if that was in fact true; I did not begin systematically studying the judicial election and selection processes until 2008. But, if being an ASA was once considered an advantage, public defenders seem to be more in favor now. On the civil side, attorneys from big firms seem to have an advantage over solos or attorneys from small firms. You will find exceptions if you carefully review all the narratives preserved here over the years... but I believe you will see the patterns as I do.
I am keenly aware that this essay may be seen by some as pessimistic: Endorsements are political, evaluations are in danger of becoming too politicized... what useful guidance have I really given the curious, civic-minded voter?
And, yet, I must add one more item to the mix, and it will not sweeten it: Back in 2018,
Injustice Watch quoted former DePaul University Law School Dean Warren Wolfson, a former circuit and appellate judge, on the subject of judicial candidate ratings. Candidates with good ratings are not necessarily qualified for judicial service, he said, adding, "Unless someone’s been sitting as a judge, you don’t really know how they’re going to behave."
Ultimately, one must put the horse in harness to see whether it can really pull the plow.
But isn't this true of just about any human endeavor? Dear voters, the overwhelming majority of you don't really
know the candidates higher up the ballot either. You form opinions, and make your choices, based on what you read and see and hear, but you don't know -- you really
can't know -- whether Candidate A will really make a good governor or senator or congressperson. You get as much information as you can, and you follow your gut. Or your precinct captain, if you can find one. (Although, if you follow the latter, you probably didn't read this far anyway.) Well, it's the same with judicial candidates: From FWIW, you can find a lot of information about Cook County judicial candidates, but, in the end, you'll have to follow your gut and make the best choices you can.
It's what we all have to do.
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