Evaluating the judicial election results in cook county

All 60 Cook County judges facing retention votes appear poised to keep their seats for another six years. But three judges are close to the 60 percent approval threshold. And those three received some negative evaluations from at least one bar association that are raising questions about judicial accountability and how voters evaluate judges So we're going to bring on the executive director of the Chicago Council of Lawyers, David Melton. David, thank you for taking the time, sir. We appreciate you. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure to be here. So talk to me about this. All 60 judges are likely to keep their seats. Does that suggest that voters are genuinely satisfied with the judges of Cook County, or does that judicial retention elections lack meaningful accountability? Well, let me answer that in two parts. First, this year's crop of judges that we evaluated, and when I say we, I mean the 14 local bar associations that evaluate judges, found that the quality was good and there were very few, relatively few problem issues with this slice of judges. However, your question about the system is a good one. Um, the system does not really, um, tell us that much about what the voters think. And more importantly, it does not work very well, um, the way it was, it doesn't work very well in the way it was designed to originally work. So, typically, over the last 30 to 40 years, the results have been pretty consistent from year to year. Every two years, in Cook County, we vote on between 60 and 70 judges who are up for retention. That's because we have about 200 judges that are elected circuit wide, and they're divided up into three staggered categories so that one third of them is up for retention every three years, every two years, sorry. And on appellate and Supreme Court justices, it's longer. They have a 10-year retention period rather than a six-year. However, the system has shown consistently over the last, as I say, 30, 40 years that typically in judicial retention elections in Cook County, you get about 60% of people voting yes on all the judges, which means they all get retained. You get about 20 percent of the people, 15 to 20 percent, voting no on all the judges. That leaves a slice of about 20 percent of the population that actually differentiates their votes on judges. And the worst judges, the ones that get the worst ratings from the bar associations typically end up in the low 60s on their approval ratings. And the judges who get the best ratings typically end up in the 70s or 80s in terms of their ratings. However, because the cutoff point is 60, that means that generally most or all of them get retained. So then talking about that cutoff point of 60, correct me if I'm wrong, there were three judges that were sort of barely above that 60% threshold. What should voters take away from that? Bye. Voters should take away from that that those three judges have some issues that those judges hopefully need to correct. They've been given feedback as to where some of us see problems With their performance and. It's clear how they need to act to improve their performances, basically. quickly. One of them needs to get better control of their emotions on the bench and the stress that they're under. One of them needs to pay a little closer attention to not just processing cases quickly, but to making sure that they get the legal rulings on those cases correct. Um... And that's the type of feedback that those judges get. And one of the judges is some people think has a bias problem being biased in favor of the prosecution. That's why those three judges are at the lower end of the approvals rating scales. And hopefully they'll take that feedback into account in how they perform in the future. David, I mentioned off the top that you're the executive director of the Chicago Council of Lawyers. I'd love to kind of know this or better understand this relationship. between lawyers and judges. So can you explain a little bit about the Chicago Council of Lawyers? And it's basically a collection of lawyers that are holding judges accountable. Can you explain that a little bit? Sure. The Chicago Council of Lawyers is one of 14 Chicago area bar associations, that's associations of lawyers, that participate in rating judges every two years. So Of those 14 bar associations, one of them acts on its own. The Chicago Bar Association historically has been doing this for over 150 years. And the other 13 bar associations that get together in what's called the Alliance of Bar Associations. We cooperatively investigate and evaluate. Interview judges, and then each bar, each of those 13 bar associations individually rates the judges on their own through their own internal processes. Chicago Council of Lawyers is a little different from some of the other bar associations in that It is what's called a public interest bar association. That means that we're most interested, not necessarily in giving benefits to our member, our lawyer members, or in promoting a certain group of lawyers, say Italian lawyers or Hispanic lawyers or. Thank Lawyers of some other ethnic or religious sect, but we are interested mostly in trying to improve the system of justice, especially for those people who are least able to protect themselves. So I was reading on some of the judges, You I mentioned that the three that are above that 60% threshold. And I believe Judge Smith. know Received seven negative Bar Association ratings, and the organization found her qualified. But is this right? But only after she agreed to take a stress management course, is that correct? That press report is correct. I can't get into too much of the details of it because these proceedings are by design confidential. So, We keep confidential our sources. We keep confidential exactly what they have told us. thank And we don't generally discuss that publicly. Can you talk a little bit about the reports that we put out? Understood. Can you talk a little bit about the feedback that you get from the judges themselves? Do they tend to be fairly open to to hearing what you guys have to say? I mean, I mean, what is that conversation like? Well, that varies the same way it varies across conversations with any human being. Some of them are very open to feedback and to criticisms and very interested in trying to improve their performance. I would say the ones who aren't open to that at least try and give the impression that they are. And some of the judges are better at implementing improvements after they've gotten feedback than others. But that ranges as a full range of human experience is no different than you talking to anybody else who's a human being. And before we let you go, you know, obviously you've been through this before. Whenever you sort of have these conversations that we're talking about, do you tend to see, is there a history of seeing a pretty good turnaround? Do you see, you know, the effects of these notes, for lack of a better word? Do you see the judges taking what you have to say to heart and adjusting course accordingly? Yes, I think in most cases, judges are open to and take the criticism and try and improve their performances. For judges who are on the bench for a long time, obviously, they go through more than one of these cycles, and we keep track of how they're doing. And generally, The norm is to see improvement over time if they've got a particular problem. If we don't see that, then that becomes a more serious point of contention over time. All right, David Melton, the executive director of the Chicago Council of Lawyers. Mr. Melton, thank you for taking the time, sir. Thanks for breaking this down for us. We appreciate you.