In February, Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye announced a radical new plan for the upcoming judicial elections, creating 15-member Independent Judicial Election Qualification Commissions for the 12 judicial districts in New York. These 180 members are screening candidates for all elected judgeships, from Surrogate all the way to City Courts — bestowing a “qualified” rating on all judges they deem fit for office.

Click here for the newly-released New York City ratings.

Because of primary calendars, party leaders began endorsing lower court candidates before ratings were released (meaning they might well be supporting candidates who are eventually found not qualified). But all state panels are expected to unveil their results before the late-September conventions, at which delegates will pick Supreme Court nominees.

The bigger question remains: Is this any way to run an election?

The panels are coming under heavy fire for a variety of reasons: their administration by the court bureaucracy, a lack of transparency, a membership that includes some players with political histories robust enough to create at least possible conflicts of interest, and, not least, a foundation that might be outright unconstitutional.

“I don’t see how any person who is ‘qualified’ according to the Constitution can be found ‘unqualified’ by some state body,” said Oscar Chase, a New York University law school professor and co-director of his school's Institute of Judicial Administration. “A bar leader, a journalist, or anybody [outside of state government] could say a judge is unqualified, but for a state office to do that violates the state Constitution. They don’t have the authority to set up a commission that sets up requirements for qualification.”

The screening panels consider the interviews and documentation presented by each candidate, analyzing a variety of factors, as listed in Part 150 of the Rules of the Chief Administrative Judge: “The criteria for evaluation shall include professional ability; character, independence and integrity; reputation for fairness and lack of bias; and temperament, including courtesy and patience.” A quorum of two-thirds is required to vote a candidate ‘qualified’ for office.

But according to the state Constitution, the only requirement of judicial candidates for Supreme Court is quite simple: proof of admission “to practice law in this state at least ten years.” A similar clause explains that all County Court, Surrogate Court, Family Court, or City Court judges must have been admitted for at least five years in New York.

That’s it. Or so says the Constitution.

On Tuesday, the Manhattan screeners rated 11 Supreme Court candidates qualified. Voters will never know exactly how many judges went before the screeners, nor how many were rated unqualified.

This much is certain. Three of those “qualified” candidates are seated justices who are up for re-election, six are acting Supreme Court Justices, one is a Civil Court judge, and one is an attorney.

Four Supreme Court spots are technically open, but three are already filled by justices seeking re-election — traditionally, they will win the Democratic Party’s nomination without blinking an eye. That would leave eight different contenders battling at the judicial convention for a single spot.

Statewide, as of Tuesday, seven of the twelve panels had delivered their results.

Beyond the constitutional question, another practical problem is that the screening panels do not release the names of candidates who were found unqualified or of candidates who simply didn’t submit their names for consideration.

Nevertheless, Barbara Zahler-Gringer, interim director for the Office of Court Administration (OCA) for First Department panels, defended the practice as a bold solution in a time when the New York judiciary is plagued by criticism:

“I think it will help make the election process more transparent to have an independent body vet these candidates, to help the public have more information when they go into the voting booth,” she concluded.

Except that voters will never see a single page of these materials. In fact, voters will only know if a candidate was deemed qualified — there is no unqualified rating. The whole process is outlined in the Rules of the Chief Administrative Judge, which clearly states that the information will not be shared.

“You want people to be as candid as possible — if they know it is confidential, then they will be candid,” explained Zahler-Gringer.

The power of selecting screeners lies overwhelmingly in the hands of the judicial administration. The Chief Judge or her presiding justices handpicked 10 of the members on each panel, two-thirds of the final total. State and local bar association leaders named the remaining members.

All of which might fail to calm complaints of prolonging an insiders’ system.

 “People weren’t opposed to screening panels,” explained Supreme Court Justice James A. Yates in a recent interview. “What they don’t want is judges being involved in appointing screening panels. Someone is going to say that those judges have manipulated the screening panel, or the screening panel was responsive to input from the judges. It’s of the highest importance for us to be separated from all that.”

In February, Justice Yates joined 100 Supreme Court justices who signed a petition urging the administration to abandon the idea of OCA-sponsored screening panels. The message was sent, but the criticism did not affect the composition or activities of the panels.


As for the partisanship of the dynamic, the Chief Administrative Judge’s rules for panel membership stresses varied voices: “Each appointing authority shall give consideration to achieving broad representation of the community, including geographic, racial, ethnic and gender diversity.”

Zahler-Gringer argued that those criteria helped assure that political allegiance played no role in the panel selection process. “There were absolutely no party considerations. Here you have several different entities, hopefully that helped to create a diverse membership,” she said in an interview.

But even a cursory examination of voting preferences and political contributions suggests that politics have indeed entered the equation. Click here to see the full list of appointees.

According to campaign finance records on file at the New York State Board of Elections, screening panel members (and their law firms) from the five boroughs have donated more than $139,000 to state political candidates since 1999.

Of that total, $23,700 went to judicial candidates. These donations are neither illegal nor unethical by the definitions set out by the chief administrative judge. But they do undermine the theory of “independence.”

Digging a little deeper, voter registration records could be confirmed for 44 of the 60 screening panel members selected from the five boroughs. Democratic members dominated the list, much the same way the party controls the political scene now: 35 members were Democrats, and nine were Republicans.


As it happens, the Queens County Democratic Party plans complete deference to the OCA screeners on Supreme Court picks.

“Competing panels would not be to the benefit of the judiciary,” explained Michael H. Reich, executive secretary for the Queens Democrats. “The chairman will not support any candidate the [OCA] panel has not found qualified. . . . Politics should play a part in it, but after the selection process.”

Other borough party chapters have made no such commitments, meaning their conventions might nominate candidates not found qualified (though, again, the OCA policy of harboring that information means voters won’t know this.)

The panels were one of many reforms outlined by the Commission to Promote Public Confidence in Judicial Elections; a four-year exploration of flaws in the court system helmed by John D. Feerick, the former dean of Fordham law school.

Professor Chase feared that the screening panels hadn’t even addressed the important reforms outlined in that report: “[Issues like] campaign donations from lawyers, party control of the process, and low voter turnout—this doesn’t really respond to that. Whether you’re deemed qualified or not, you’re still going to have the problem of party bosses and campaign donations.”

The Feerick Report laid out a number of crucial flaws in the system, acknowledging a number of factors that the OCA screen panel mandate excluded. Most dramatically, the report called for public financing alongside screening panels, a step that would at least nominally weaken the connection between political money and candidate vetting.

“Indeed, many leaders knowledgeable about their local candidate selection processes admit that these focus less on a candidate’s legal skills than on the applicant’s political activity and ability to raise money,” the report concluded.

Politics aside, evaluators will gather a goldmine of biographical and resume materials through the 49-question application, including: a list of the 10 last trials a candidate worked on, sample briefs or opinions, work history, and law association lists.

But since that information will never be seen by those non on screening panels, Chase reiterated his view that whole dynamic threatens more harm than good.

“Why would you want to do this? I fear that some people will do it to advance particular parties or political interests,” he said, predicting that the political stranglehold on judicial politics that decreased public confidence in the judiciary would nevertheless haunt these panels as well. “If I wanted to be a judge I would not cooperate.”