Since 1947, the King County Bar Association's judicial candidate evaluations have been a mainstay for voters in Washington's appellate court elections. This year, a candidate for the Washington Supreme Court, Stephen Johnson, sent a letter to KCBA declining to participate in his evaluation by KCBA's Judicial Screening Committee.
A copy of the letter was sent to The Seattle Times' political columnist David Postman, who posted the letter on his Web log site.1 The letter generated more than 60 comments. Most of those who commented were critical of the candidate's position.
The letter states that most of the KCBA Judicial Screening Committee members are "partisan activists;" that they are "heavily tilted towards one side of the partisan scale;" and that "during the last three election cycles [current and former members of the 70-person committee have] contributed approximately $19,000 to partisan Democratic candidates and $800 to Republican partisan candidates."
The letter deserves the courtesy of a reply because it leaves the public with misleading impressions of the screening process. Several points can be made.
1. KCBA Ratings Are Consistent With Other Groups' Ratings. The accompanying table shows that in the 2002 and 2004 elections, KCBA and the Municipal League of King County independently assigned comparable ratings to eight of the 17 appellate judicial candidates who received ratings from both organizations.2 The Municipal League's ratings in particular provide a valuable crosscheck because non-lawyers constitute the majority of the members of its screening committee.
Similarly, during the 2004 election, KCBA and the Tacoma-Pierce County Bar Association independently assigned identical ratings to six of the eight Supreme Court candidates who received ratings from both organizations.3
Except in the case of one candidate, none of these groups rated any candidate more than one level higher or lower than the others' ratings for the same candidate.4 The point here is that judicial candidates are receiving very similar, if not identical, ratings from two separate lawyer groups and one predominantly non-lawyer group.5
2. Voters Need Judicial Candidate Ratings. If judges are to be elected, then the more information voters receive about judicial candidates, the better. Without evaluations of judicial candidates, the vast majority of voters would have no information about judicial candidates except for the candidates' own self-serving campaign literature, and perhaps whatever negative advertising their opponents might publish.
The voters may be deprived of valuable information if a judicial candidate refuses to stand before his or her peers and be evaluated. A candidate punishes only the voters, not KCBA, if the screening committee is unable to obtain sufficient information to evaluate that candidate. For that reason, KCBA's screening committee members work very hard to obtain enough information to be able to evaluate each judicial candidate, even if a candidate refuses to cooperate.
3. KCBA's Screening Process Is Thorough. The KCBA process is one of the most thorough reviews that is conducted for any candidates for state or local public office. Almost all candidates answer extensive questionnaires and appear for an interview by the screening committee. In the case of every candidate, committee members contact dozens of persons who have dealt with the candidate first-hand, to measure the candidate's litigation experience and judicial experience, if any, and also the candidate's personality traits that may make the candidate fit (or not fit) for judicial office. These traits include temperament, common sense, legal ability, communication skills, patience, courtesy and integrity. (See the article by Terry Scanlan and David Strout on Page 17).
No questions are asked regarding the candidate's political affiliation on the candidate questionnaire or at interviews. Political affiliation plays no part in the committee's process.
4. Committee Members Make No Donations to Judicial Campaigns. The 70 lawyer and non-lawyer volunteers serving on the KCBA Judicial Screening Committee are prohibited from donating to judicial campaigns, endorsing candidates or seeking election or appointment to judicial office while serving on the committee. They are not, however, restricted from donating to non-judicial political campaigns. Occasional political contributions by some committee members to non-judicial candidates do not equate to "partisan activism."
Obviously, no candidate and no voter is obliged to agree with any particular rating issued by any group's screening committee. Likewise, no screening process can ever be entirely free of at least some subjective component.
The purpose of KCBA's screening committee is simply to provide the public with a principled and consistent source of information about judicial candidates, gathered and evaluated by largely self-selected lawyer and non-lawyer volunteers who understand how our justice system works. Our electorate absolutely needs this input.
Otherwise it could be even harder for voters to make informed choices about who should be their judges.
John Ruhl serves as the KCBA president. He is a member in the Seattle office of Eisenhower & Carlson PLLC. His commercial trial practice includes employment, construction, transportation and banking matters. He can be reached at jruhl@eisenhowerlaw.com.
1 http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/david postman/archives/2006/06/supreme_court_candidate_doesnt_want_bar_rating.html
2 The Municipal League of King County began evaluating Court of Appeals candidates in 2002 and Supreme Court candidates in 2004.
3 The Tacoma-Pierce County Bar Association's ratings from 2002 are not available.
4 For purposes of this analysis, two of the Municipal League's intermediate ratings, "Good" and "Adequate," are treated as being equivalent to KCBA's "Adequate" rating (renamed in 2005 to be "Qualified") and the TPCBA's "Qualified" rating.
5 Other local bar associations' ratings of certain appellate judicial candidates since 2002 can be viewed on the KCBA Web site at http://www.kcba.org/ratings/ratings.aspx. Those ratings are very similar to the ratings shown in the table included here.
