Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Sunday, November 26, 2006 3:33:16 PM
Former Colorado Justice Rebecca Love Kourlis has an editorial in today's Denver Post promoting the need for reform. I did not discover it until I had written my earlier posts.
Frankly, the editorial suggests very little in the way of change, at least here in Colorado, and I am quite disappointed. She does not address the root of the problem, legal and judicial ethics at all.
Her changes:
We should remake our system with a new commitment to openness and public service - a philosophy and a process the institute calls building "Transparent Courthouses." This is nothing short of a paradigm shift, calling not only for transparency of process but also for an overhaul of mindset in the court system.
A "Transparent Courthouse" that is run by a judge who has no commitment to enforcing and obeying ethics rules doesn't accomplish anything, except to make people like me just a bit more unhappy.
It should become more common to see a judge greeting jurors individually, explaining the dynamics of what's to come in simple terms, debriefing a jury or taking part in community meetings to discuss the role of the courts in our everyday lives. In recent years, many of us have worked for systemic changes to nurture this type of more personal, open connection between judges and the community, but much more must be done.
She thinks of it as a PR problem, with PR solutions. I disagree. It is a systemic problem that PR solutions will not touch.
Subject [judges] to retention elections with full disclosure of the evaluation results.
She suggests this one useful change, but does not amplify enough for me to understand what she means regarding making judges accountable.
Let's put comment cards in every courthouse as well as online. Any person who has an experience, positive or negative, with a judge or with court staff can fill out a card. Comments would be collated by an independent body to assure anonymity and then provided to the judge and to the chief judge for improvement and education. This data would also be available to the performance commission as additional anecdotal evidence when the judge is being evaluated.
More PR stuff. If the comment cards were negative, she would suggest doing away with them on the theory, as she says in her report: "The experience in Arizona, Colorado and elsewhere suggests that those who attend public hearings more often have come to bury a judge than praise him.
On Election Day, Americans voted down an array of sensational and simplistic initiatives. Let's not make the mistake of assuming this was a vote for the status quo.
If any of the three major newspapers in Colorado had bothered to inform the public of the legal ethics crisis, Amendment 40 would have passed easily. It was neither sensational, nor simplistic.