Judicial Selection Coalition

A number of legal and civic groups are participating in a Judicial Selection Coalition. According to the King County Bar Association, one of the coalition members

Some of the expressed concerns that gave rise to this coalition effort are: the increasingly partisan nature of judicial campaigns; the escalating costs of funding a judicial election campaign; the lack of judicial campaign financing limits; the growing amounts of special interest money being injected into judicial campaigns; the lack of sufficient standards for eligibility for judicial office; the relative shortage of useful information available to voters regarding judicial candidates and the difficulties of ferreting out such information; and the skewing of voting results by irrelevant factors such as ballot placement and commonness of names of judicial candidates.

The members of the coalition are:

• American Judicature Society (Washington Chapter)


• Asian Bar Association of Washington


• Defender Association
• King County Bar Association
• League of Women Voters of Washington
• Loren Miller Bar Association
• Municipal League of King County


• Washington Defense Trial Lawyers


• Washington State Bar Association


• Washington State Trial Lawyers Association

The KCBA website includes links to much more information.

Curious about judicial selection in other states? See Judicial Selection in the States, from the American Judicature Society. (It includes Washington, of course.)

Categories: judges, judicial-selection, American-Judicature-Society, WSBA, WSTLA, KCBA