Vox Populunacy

In California, judges are most commonly appointed by the Governor, but all sitting judges must periodically stand for election.   That judicial election/reconfirmation process famously resulted in the voters' removal of California Chief Justice Rose Bird and two other justices from the state Supreme Court in 1986.

At the trial court level, when a judge is up for reconfirmation by the voters, it is possible for a candidate to run against that judge, seeking to take his or her place on the bench.   Most trial judges are unopposed -- and therefore keep their seats for another cycle -- but occasionally one will be voted out in favor of an opponent.   (Running to replace a sitting judge, or running in an election to fill the vacancy of a retiring judge, is the way in which one can become a California judge without first being appointed by the Governor.)

This year, only one current judge out of 140 on the Los Angeles Superior Court drew a challenge, and the outcome reflects rather badly on the electorate. 

In this past Tuesday's election in Los Angeles County, voters inexplicably chose to remove 20-year veteran judge Dzintra Janavs in favor of one-time attorney turned bakery owner Lynn Diane Olson.  The match up was well described in the Los Angeles Times' April 17 editorial endorsing Janavs for reelection:

Office No. 120: Dzintra Janavs is a charming, commanding, experienced and often brusque and impatient judge who earned the distinction of being the only one to draw a challenge among the more than 140 Los Angeles Superior Court judges up for election this year.  The challenge comes from Lynn Diane Olson, an attorney who has been on "inactive" status for most of her career while she ran Manhattan Bread and Bagel, in Manhattan Beach, with her husband.  Olson could articulate no good reason to challenge Janavs, except to say that a judge should have to defend her seat.  Olson may make the better bagel.  Janavs would remain by far the better judge.

[Underscoring, and bagel hyperlink, added.]

Judge Janavs has presided for over a decade in one of the central "Writs & Receivers" courtrooms in downtown Los Angeles, meaning that she has had a steady diet of complex injunctions, administrative mandamus proceedings, and the like -- tough stuff requiring intellectual heft and solid judicial demeanor.  Looking back, I would have to say that she ruled against my clients as often as she ruled in favor of them.  She was all of the things that the Times says, above all experienced, very smart, attentive and hard-working.  Even when I disagreed with one of her rulings, I had to admit that she had listened closely to my arguments and was able to articulate detailed reasons for not being persuaded by them.

The speculation prior to the election was that Ms. Olson had chosen to challenge Judge Janavs in particular not because of any quarrel with Judge Janavs' rulings or qualifications, but because the judge has a "foreign-sounding" name.  (Judge Janavs was born in Lithuania, and has the accent to prove it.)  Given that the average voter is usually completely in the dark about anyone running for a judgeship, it is all too conceivable that the sound of a name might be the particular irrelevant factor deciding how a vote is cast.

Hail and farewell, your Honor, you will be missed.

The local legal newspaper, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, reported the Olson-beats-Janavs story today, and it includes a surprise appearance by Harvey Rosenfield, the architect of Proposition 103, last seen bucking up Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi's [now-successful] campaign for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor.  The Journal does not make its content available online for non-subscribers, so I quote with emphasis added:

'It came down to her unusual name, nothing more,' said consumer advocate and attorney Harvey J. Rosenfield.

Rosenfield, who was frequently in Janavs' court when she was assigned to hundreds of consumer cases related to an insurance reform measure he promoted, said he thinks the outcome reflects a flawed system.

'The politics are very simple,' Rosenfield said.  'Nobody knows who these people are.'

The public's knowledge of a candidate should not be based on the ability to raise money to get the message out, he said. . . .

'There's something unseemly and dangerous that judges have to raise money to run for office,' he said.

Rosenfield's point has merit . . . but it is a peculiar and somewhat inconsistent sentiment coming from a man who counts among his prouder achievements Proposition 103's transformation of the office of Insurance Commissioner from an appointed to an elected post, "accountable directly to the people." 

Elective Democracy: "unseemly and dangerous" or a guarantee of "accountability to the people"?  For Harvey Rosenfield, it all seems to depend on how each particular election comes out.

Comments

[Rich Ard]

For Harvey Rosenfield, it all seems to depend on how each particular election comes out.

Perhaps it depends on the position as well - a judge's job, as I understand it, is to interpret the law, whereas an insurance commissioner's is to misinterpret it.