Home ›
About ›
Communications ›
NCBA News ›
2008 News Articles › Judicial Performance Evaluation Report Issued
Judicial Performance Evaluation Report Issued
Article Date: Friday, November 07, 2008
Written By: Russell Rawlings
The Board of Governors of the North Carolina Bar Association (NCBA) is pleased to release the final report of the Judicial Performance Evaluation pilot project.
There is, however, nothing final about it. Instead, the report represents the final summary of data collected during the first phase of this ongoing endeavor. During this stage of the pilot project, only those NCBA member attorneys with e-mail addresses on file with the bar association were surveyed.
A total of 9,925 responses are being tabulated and reported in two formats:
(1) One provides individual survey responses, including anonymous comments from participating attorneys, which were provided confidentially to individual judges. Superior Court judges have received their reports; District Court judges will receive theirs soon.
(2) The other combined or final report released by the NCBA neither ranks nor rates individual judges by name. Instead, the report assigns anonymous numbers to each member of the Superior and District Court bench. Composite scores on a scale of 1-5 are provided in each of the five survey categories: legal ability, integrity and impartiality, communication, professionalism and administrative skills.
The responses were largely favorable and in many instances extremely positive. There is some concern by the Association that some judges were evaluated by a small number of respondents, especially at the District Court level.
“Overall, the average number of respondents per Superior Court judge (45.39) was acceptable, although not ideal,” the report states. “The average number of respondents per District Court judge (19.80) was in the low range of acceptability and lower than desirable.
“The level of participation, particularly at the District Court level, is a likely artifact of the large number of judges contained in the evaluation materials.”
The second phase of the pilot project, a comprehensive survey that includes court personnel, frequent witnesses and numerous prosecutors and public defenders who may not be members of the bar association, is currently being tested in Guilford and Cabarrus counties. Upon completion of this phase and a thorough analysis of the data, the Association will consider future steps to take toward implementing North Carolina's first statewide judicial evaluation program.
Please note that the JPE project is a work in progress. The two pilot surveys were undertaken as a study to determine whether surveys of this kind could provide reliable and valid information for use in evaluating the performance of judges and to provide some feedback to judges for the purpose of possible self improvement. It was never intended to be a basis for releasing information to the public for use in the upcoming election.
The report itself has its shortcoming. A misstatement regarding the availability of electronic copies of individual reports, upon request, appears in the Introduction and Overview. This is not the case: individual evaluations will not be released to anyone other than the individual judges.
Click here to access the final report of the Judicial Performance Evaluation pilot project.