From the Detroit Free Press:
Michigan’s court of last resort gets its first report card
The Michigan Supreme Court is the end of the line for those seeking justice as this state sees fit to define it.
Lose there, and it’s time to pay your lawyer and move on — or, if yours is a criminal appeal, to go back to making license plates.
You may suspect that the justices who ruled against you never understood what your case was about, or that they hated your attorney.
You may even think that justices who pocketed thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the guy you sued never had any intention of giving you a fair shake.
But unless you’ve got evidence of criminal wrongdoing, or unless your case raises constitutional issues that pique the interest of the federal courts, your only chance to hold justices accountable is when they run for re-election every eight years.
Chief justice ranks low
But on Monday, the Michigan Lawyers Weekly will publish the first performance evaluation of the state’s top jurists, which is sure to provoke plenty of discussion among judges and lawyers — and maybe even percolate down to November’s single high court race in which Republican Chief Justice Clifford Taylor will confront a still-unnamed Democratic challenger.
Taylor fares relatively poorly in the performance survey in which 79 lawyers who appeared before the high court at least once in the last six years rated the justices on a scale of 1 (“poor”) to 5 (“excellent”) on each of eight “judicial characteristics.”
Taylor was rated last among the justices in “overall knowledge of the law” and “thoroughness of opinions” — the written documents in which justices explain their reasons for ruling as they did.
The chief justice’s median overall rating — 2.91 on a scale of 5 — placed him sixth among the seven justices, with only Justice Robert Young Jr. trailing at 2.85.
Michael Cavanagh, the court’s longest-serving incumbent, also was the top-ranking justice, with a 4.1 overall rating.
Cavanagh, a Democrat who will be 74 when his term expires in 2015, also ranked highest in five of the eight areas measured, including overall knowledge of the law, thoroughness of opinions, open-mindedness, demeanor and efficiency.
Leaning toward accountability
The lawyers who participated in the Michigan Lawyers Weekly Survey represent slightly more than 10% of the 774 whose opinions were solicited by pollster Steve Mitchell’s firm.
By definition, every participant had an axe to grind — a case or cases in which the justices being rated ruled for or against the lawyer’s client.
But Mitchell says he corrected for this inherent bias by asking participants to indicate whether they agreed with the justice being rated most of the time, more than half of the time, less than half of the time, or almost never.
In the rankings cited, lawyers who agreed with the justice being rated at least half the time ranked him in the same order as lawyers who disagreed with the justice at least half the time.
That is, even lawyers who disagreed with Cavanagh most of the time ranked him the most knowledgeable, and even lawyers who agreed with Taylor most of the time ranked him the least knowledgeable.
But it’s hardly a random sample — and we don’t know who the participating lawyers (or their clients) were.
Even so, the Michigan Lawyer’s Weekly survey gives voters a better idea how those who know them best evaluate the justices from whose judgment there is no appeal.
Turtle Talk 