Who’s judging our judges in Dallas?

Since 1950, the Dallas Bar Association has conducted its Judicial Evaluation Poll, an anonymous survey of its members about the performance of the local civil and criminal court judges.

The poll has sometimes been criticized as a popularity contest. Still, the collective opinion of courtroom lawyers about the work ethic, temperament and other important characteristics of our county, state, federal and appellate judges is among the few measures of judicial performance we have.

This publicly available scorecard has been widely valued and anticipated by those within the justice system, as well as this newspaper, and we think has helped improve our judiciary.

So we are disappointed that the poll, conducted in off-election years, was not conducted this spring as usual. And the bar won’t say when or if it will be.

Of course, the lawyers association is a private entity and has no duty to review judges, but its longstanding tradition of doing so is a valuable public service that we’d like to see resumed as soon as possible.

We’ve had numerous concerns about judicial performance in the last year. Like some Dallas County commissioners, we’ve questioned whether judges were working diligently enough to clear backlogs of cases that piled up during the pandemic. Several judges, too, have faced troubling ethical investigations by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.

That commission has the ability to sanction and even suspend a judge for misconduct. But, as we’ve recently reported, it has shown a worrisome trend this year of issuing more private sanctions, in which judges are not named and the details of the complaints concealed, than public ones.

That’s why we like the bar’s poll. Each judge is named and scored on whether he or she is prepared for court, issues opinions and orders without unnecessary delay, is impartial, demonstrates adequate knowledge of the law, and has a proper judicial demeanor. About 10% of the bar’s 11,000 members rate judges as excellent, acceptable or needing improvement. Sometimes respondents say they have no opinion.

Bar spokeswoman Jessica Smith said that its board of directors this year “decided it was time to review the poll prior to it being sent out and that process is happening now.” But she would not say why it was under review, or if it would be conducted at all this year.

Thankfully, it’s not gone for good: “All indications are that the poll will continue,” she said.

Other than the state commission, only the appeals courts serve as a measure of judicial performance by grading the papers, so to speak, of the lower court judges by determining whether their rulings have been legally proper.

But now more than ever, we need deeper scrutiny of those entrusted with such enormous power over our everyday lives. The bar’s poll, though not perfect, has served that function. We hope to see it again soon.