By Antonio D. French
Filed Wednesday, August 30, 2006 at 8:15 AM
In the November general election, Missouri voters will determine whether Non-Partisan judges whose names are on their ballot should be retained for another term. To help them decide, The Missouri Bar has provided information they feel is important in making those decisions. Labels: Courts
Members of The Missouri Bar have evaluated each of the judges who will be standing for retention this fall and the evaluations are now online at www.showmecourts.org.
In St. Louis County, the Bar recommended two judges, Judy Preddy Draper and Brenda Stith Loftin, not be retained. Click here to see those recommendations.
Click here to download the Bar's recommendations for St. Louis City Circuit Judges. And click here for Associate Circuit Judges.
3 Comments:
The public has got to start paying attention to these results--most people I know say they either vote yes or no to all the judges, or randomly vote, depending on how they feel that day. This is too important and if even the lawyers, who don't want to say anything bad about fellow lawyers/judges, say there are problems then the public needs to consider that and vote responsibly.
8/30/2006 10:22 AM
As the son of a lawyer, I'm not sure why voters would be interested in the opinion of members of the bar. It seems a bit like the foxes guarding the hen house. I'd be interested in the companion poll of jurors, or one of parties to the cases that were in front of these judges. Also, I'd like to know where the judges stand on various issues. All of that seems more helpful than a poll of MoBar members.
8/31/2006 10:27 PM
Some truth to that Travis, although the "foxes," as you call them, don't seem to be helped much by protecting a hen house full of rotten hens. I bet your dad would tell you that he can think of judges who ruled in his favor on cases that were rude to parties or the lawyers or who weren't conversant with the law, and he didn't approve of them even if the case did go his way. I mean, when a judge is scoring as low as these bottom two did, the lawyers certainly aren't closing ranks around them.
As far as polling the parties, seems that would pretty much break down 50/50--winner likes the judge, loser doesn't. It might have the benefit of getting the public to pay attention to the fact that judges are elected, however, not appointed in some secret back room somewhere.
Polling the jurors is a good step, however.
9/02/2006 2:35 AM
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