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Chicago Council of Lawyers Position on the Creation of Judicial Subcircuits Outside of Cook County January 14, 2005 Dear Governor Blagojevich: Recently, the General Assembly passed HB 949 (a significant portion of which was passed without public hearing) which will create an additional 23 judicial subcircuits in 5 judicial circuits. The Chicago Council of Lawyers urges you to veto this legislation. Proponents of this legislation argue that judicial subcircuit elections increase ethnic and racial diversity. The intent of ethnic and racial diversity is laudable and without question. We think it noteworthy, however, that an April 2003 report by the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice and the Chicago Council of Lawyers found that while in Cook County the subcircuit system has increased diversity to a limited extent, the associate judge process has also increased judicial diversity. We think more analysis is needed to explore to what extent subcircuits have increased diversity as compared to the associate judge process. Just as important, we found that the subcircuit system has had negative results. In particular, the rise of a political subculture through which local political organizations have become more and more responsible for placing judges on the bench, has sometimes resulted in grossly unqualified lawyers being elevated to the bench. Such unqualified judges have been backed by the local political organizations solely because of their activities in the local political arena -- not because of their credentials . In addition, the design of subcircuit elections requires candidates to run initially in the subcircuit in which they reside. The prospective pool of qualified candidates is therefore relatively diminished. Further, political parties tend to exert even more control over candidate slating and the need for campaign fundraising increases. The Chicago Tribune in a January 2nd editorial wrote that extending subcircuits to the collar counties will "only make those judicial races more suspect. They will reduce the potential field of candidates and give local party bosses more influence over the results..." One of the arguments made for expanding the subcircuit concept into additional counties is that electing judges from a smaller geographic area will allow voters access to better information about candidates. That argument is spurious. Objective, unbiased information about candidates can and should be made available in a broadly-distributed voters guide and other means of education. Our 2003 report showed that voters are not getting information about judicial candidates, including subcircuit races. As a follow-up, Chicago Appleseed created, for the 2004 retention elections, the voteforjudges.org website and campaign. The website received more than one million hits and more than 100,000 pages were downloaded. The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform maintained an electronic voter's guide that received more than 250,000 hits during the month before the 2004 general election. What this means is that voters both need and want information about judicial candidates and judges seeking retention - if it is provided in timely and user-friendly ways. But contrary to the claims by proponents of this legislation, simply having judges elected through subcircuits does not lead to better information for voters about judicial candidates. In addition, some have suggested that judges elected from subcircuits better represent voters in those subcircuits. Judges are not elected to represent a constituency; they are elected to be impartial, independent arbiters of the law. The Chicago Council of Lawyers supports increasing diversity on the bench; however, House Bill 949 is not the way to do it. The bill, portions of which did not even receive a public hearing or proper floor debate, was hastily passed in the days before the new Assembly was inaugurated. Additional subcircuits will increase the likelihood that judicial elections will become even more political than they already are. There may be ways to increase judicial diversity without the harmful effects created by subcircuits. We have committed to expanding our study on the extent to which subcircuits have achieved the stated goal of ethnic and racial diversity as compared to the associate judge process. We have begun this analysis, but in the meantime, we urge you to veto this legislation. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, |