Sunday, June 01, 2008
Remove politics from appointments
From the RoundTable blog
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George A. McLean Jr.
McLean is the president of the Roanoke Bar Association and lives in Roanoke.
The Roanoke Valley has a new general district court judge, Chris Clemens, former Salem City Council member. On April 25, a majority of the valley's six Circuit Court judges selected Clemens to fill, on an interim basis, the seat left vacant when former Judge Julian Raney retired in December.
Since Raney announced his retirement more than eight months ago, the Roanoke Valley's five state legislators have deadlocked along party lines on choosing a permanent replacement.
The three Republicans have favored Clemens, while the two Democrats have supported Roanoke Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell. All agree that either candidate would make a fine judge, but the decision has been mired in political positioning. This stalemate has left the job vacant and the valley's judicial system overburdened, with no measurable gain achieved for either party.
How can the legislators rise above partisanship in the selection process? There is a way.
On Nov. 13, the membership of the Roanoke Bar Association met and conducted a vote by secret ballot to select among six well-qualified candidates one individual to receive the RBA's endorsement for the judgeship. This painstaking process took several rounds of ballots over several hours to reach a majority vote, with approximately one-third (156 attorneys) of the RBA membership participating. Those voting came from a wide cross-section of political parties and practice areas: plaintiffs' lawyers, defense counsel, corporate counsel, prosecutors, public defenders and criminal defense attorneys.
RBA bylaws set forth the voting procedures (see roanokebar.com/bylaws.html). All RBA members in good standing may vote. When a judicial vacancy occurs, individual attorneys announce to the RBA members their interest in the judgeship, their desire to be considered for endorsement and their qualifications for the job. Candidates' political affiliations are not at issue.
When the membership meets for the vote, each member writes his or her choice on a ballot and then turns it over to the tellers, made up of RBA board members. Any candidates not receiving at least 5 percent of the votes are dropped out of the next round. When a round results in a majority vote for one candidate, he or she receives the RBA endorsement. The Salem-Roanoke County Bar Association follows a similar endorsement procedure. Upon completion of this process, the bar associations communicate their endorsements to our legislators to aid their selection process.
Bar association members make the effort to complete the time-consuming endorsement procedure because selecting the right candidate for a judgeship is so critical to the well-being of the Roanoke community. Judges protect the integrity of the legal system, which in turn protects the individual rights of people in all walks of life.
The endorsement procedure enables RBA members, as attorneys, to bring to bear on the selection process our unique knowledge of the job and the candidates. As attorneys, we practice law in front of judges and experience firsthand what character traits, temperament and abilities help a judge to achieve effective justice.
We practice law as colleagues and fellow members of the bar with those individuals who become candidates for a judgeship. We have witnessed and gathered information about a candidate's professional ability and experience, work ethic, temperament, character, intellectual capacity, judgment, honesty, objectivity, community respect, integrity, commitment to equal justice, communication skills and biases.
One local legislator has suggested that a conflict of interest exists when attorneys endorse a candidate to the General Assembly. On the contrary, as you can see, an endorsee has been evaluated by all sectors of the bar and selected by secret ballot. It is no more a conflict of interest for the bar as a whole to vote to endorse a candidate than it is for our legislators as a group to elect individuals to leadership positions in the General Assembly.
While there is no perfect method to select judges, the bar's system balances all of the competing interests. Through the years the system has been instrumental in the final selection of the judges appointed. Our community has benefitted from the wisdom and service of the outstanding, respected judiciary so created. The bar endorsement deserves the strong consideration of the legislative delegation in selecting judicial candidates.
