As in years past, commissioners asked candidates about their judicial philosophies, their thoughts on criminal justice reform and their views on the role of the court in society.
The Indiana Judicial Nominating Commission will reconvene next month for a full day of interviews with the 12 candidates vying to succeed Judge James Kirsch on the Indiana Court of Appeals.
The 12 semifinalists, who are proceeding to another round of interviews, shared their judicial philosophies during interviews last week.
The Indiana Judicial Nominating Commission will conduct a second round of interviews with the 12. It ultimately will narrow the pool to three finalists and submit those names to Gov. Eric Holcomb for final selection.
The Indiana Judicial Nominating Commission interviewed 11 applicants Thursday for an upcoming vacancy on the Indiana Court of Appeals, kicking off two days of interviews with candidates to succeed Judge James Kirsch.
A federal lawsuit filed by the Democratic mayor of Hammond and a Lake County attorney argues that Indiana’s judicial nominating system that appoints judges in the state’s four most diverse counties is racially discriminatory. Judges in Lake County should be directly elected or judges statewide should be appointed through merit selection, the suit says.
The structure of judicial selection in Lake and St. Joseph counties will soon change now that Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb has signed controversial legislation changing the composition of the judicial selection panels in the northern Indiana counties.
Indiana has no legitimate excuse to require “excuses” for registered voters who wish to cast an absentee ballot. The state is not our parent, and in the last vote, plenty of us determined that as grown adults we shouldn’t have to go through a ridiculous exercise of asking their permission. The last thing that ought to be is a law.
All 23 lawyers and judges who applied to succeed Judge James Kirsch on the Indiana Court of Appeals will be interviewed by the Indiana Judicial Nominating Commission next month.
Twelve judges and 11 lawyers from central Indiana have applied to succeed retiring Judge James Kirsch on the Indiana Court of Appeals.
The Indiana Senate approved a bill reducing local attorney input into who serves on the judicial nominating commissions for Lake and St. Joseph counties Monday despite objections from Democratic senators, one of whom insinuated the changes were triggered by anonymous complaints from candidates who had lost out on judge appointments.
A bill that would change how superior court judges are nominated in Lake and St. Joseph counties was uniformly opposed by lawyers and judges from those counties in a Senate hearing Wednesday but narrowly advanced on a 5-4 vote.
Legislation that has drawn fire from bar associations and members of the legal community who say proposed changes to judicial appointments would politicize the trial court benches in Lake and St. Joseph counties will be heard Wednesday by a Senate committee.
Your publication recently printed an article discussing the Indiana State Bar Association’s objections to Indiana Senate Joint Resolution 16. The bar association’s complaint about SJR 16, and the slant of the article, is that the resolution proposes to “strip” Hoosier voters of the power to retain Indiana appellate court judges and Supreme Court justices. I do not believe that complaint is well-founded.
Lawyers and judges interested in applying for an upcoming vacancy on the Indiana Court of Appeals bench may now do so, the Indiana Supreme Court announced Friday.
For the second time this year, the Indiana State Bar Association is publicly opposing legislation targeting judicial selection in Indiana, this time speaking against a bill that it says would “unnecessarily change a working system” for judicial selection in Lake and St. Joseph counties.
A bill in the Legislature would restructure the composition of judicial nominating commissions in Lake and St. Joseph counties. Currently, an even number of attorneys and nonattorney members are appointed by local stakeholders, but the proposal would reduce attorney representation, which has prompted a backlash in the northern Indiana legal communities.
By initiating a constitutional amendment based on misinformation, three Indiana Republican state senators, now joined by multiple others, have proposed a radical resolution to eliminate citizen involvement in the retention vote of appellate judges, changing the current selection process that has been in place for 50 years. This proposal also severely decreases judicial independence and increases the political pressure on our state’s appellate judiciary. Indeed, if successful, the proposal would give the legislative branch far greater control over the Indiana state appellate judges and justices. It would also further embed in Indiana’s Constitution more systemic racism.
Legal professionals in Lake and St. Joseph counties are raising serious concerns about advancing legislation that would change the structure of the local judicial nominating commissions that shape the state trial court judiciary in the northern Indiana counties.
The minimum number of court senior judge service days for the upcoming year has been doubled from 15 to 30, and courts are encouraged to use senior judges to assist during the current COVID-19 pandemic, the Indiana Supreme Court announced in a Wednesday order.