Mounting pressure on the courts from politicians and special-interest groups makes it more important than ever to ensure that Colorado judges are fair, impartial and qualified to do their jobs.
Voters last year defeated an attempt by former state Senate president John Andrews that would have purged every judge on the Colorado Supreme Court appointed by a Democratic governor — while keeping every Republican appointee.
Andrews is now back, trying to place a slightly less toxic version on the 2008 ballot. It no longer applies only to Democrats but would still strip Colorado courts of their most experienced judges by limiting them to just 12 years on the bench. The resulting influx of neophytes would worsen the backlog of civil litigation in Colorado, where businesses and ordinary citizens already endure long and expensive waits for their day in court.
Coloradans can be proud that their 40-year-old merit selection system for judges has produced one of the nation’s fairest and most competent court systems — in stark contrast to recurring scandals in Texas and the 20 other states that still elect judges by openly partisan elections dominated by attack ads and big money raised and spent by special interests.
But that doesn’t mean Colorado’s system can’t be made better. One important reform now being considered by Sen. Brandon Shaffer and Rep. Terrance Carroll would strengthen the current Judicial Performance Evaluation system.
Critics dismiss Colorado’s current system of letting voters decide whether to retain judges because only about 1 percent of judges are actually defeated at the polls. But a far higher number decide to quietly retire after the stringent performance reviews they must undergo indicate they are not doing a good job.
One reform being considered by Shaffer and Carroll would make public at least the number and circumstances of such retirements, though not necessarily the names of the judges who step down after negative reviews.
As a recent poll by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System and the League of Women Voters Education Fund shows, the more Colorado citizens know about our courts, the more confidence they have in the fairness of our judicial system.
That makes the case for opening up the details of judicial performance evaluations to the eyes of those discerning voters.
