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The Selection of Judges in Chicago, and the Rôle of the Local Bar Therein

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Edward M. Martin
Edward M. Martin
Affiliation:
Chicago, Illinois
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Extract

For many years, the organized Bar has sought to guide the process of judicial selection. Its greatest activity has been in metropolitan communities where the choice is nominally by vote of the people. Such participation by a quasi-public group in a democratic procedure raises several pertinent questions. For example, what effect will it probably have on methods of selection now in force? Is such activity likely to become an accepted feature of our political life? Is such participation to be regarded as in the public interest? Is it a specific corrective that the body politic has developed to counterbalance too much democracy in judicial selection?

To shed some light on these and related questions, the writer (as a graduate student at the University of Chicago) made a study of judicial selection in Chicago from 1870 to 1933, particular attention being given to the rôle of the Chicago Bar Association in the process.

Type
Judicial Affairs
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , April 1936 , pp. 315 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1936

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References

1 Under the title of The Rôle of the Bar in Electing the Bench in Chicago, this study is soon to be published by the University of Chicago Press.

2 The judges of the county and probate courts of Cook county and of the Municipal Court of Chicago are nominated in general party primaries in April and are elected in the general elections in November. The judges of the circuit and superior courts of Cook county and the judge of the Illinois supreme court from the district which includes Chicago are nominated in party conventions, and are elected in June at elections separate from the general elections.

3 The Chicago Bar Association is the principal group among the local legal profession. Its membership includes approximately 44 per cent of the local Bar, and is even more representative when account is taken of the large number of duly licensed attorneys who are not active practitioners.

4 On the average, 60 per cent of the Association's membership vote in the Bar primaries. This ratio compares favorably with similar participation in Cleveland, Detroit, and Los Angeles.

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