MY TURN: Choosing judges for Kootenai County

On May 16, the First Judicial Magistrate Commission will meet to consider 12 candidates for two magistrate judge positions. Who are the candidates? What types of judges should we require for the First District, which includes Boundary, Bonner, Kootenai, Shoshone and Benewah counties?

Idaho Code section 1-2205(1)(b) states a Magistrate Commission is to appoint new magistrate judges “on a nonpartisan merit basis.” That same section cautions that magistrate appointments are “subject to disapproval by a majority of the district judges in the district within thirty (30) days” after the appointments. The adjective nonpartisan is a political one, but what does a “merit basis” mean? 

First, a merit basis is not the baseline criteria found at Idaho Code section 1-2206, such as a candidate 30 years old, a citizen, a two-year resident of Idaho, etc. The Public Questionnaire for this merit basis evaluation got closer by asking for qualities including a candidate's “integrity and moral courage, legal ability, legal experience, intelligence and wisdom, capacity to be fair-minded and deliberate, industriousness and promptness in performing duties, compatibility of personal habits and outside activities with judicial office, and capacity to be courteous and considerate on the bench.” Quite a list. 

It is unknown how any member of the public would have information such as this about a given candidate, so it appears the Public Questionnaire is designed for candidates’ friends, neighbors or professional colleagues. I have been litigating in First District Courts for almost 20 years. While the listed qualities are important, I advise additional criteria to ensure the candidates can better handle magistrate-level cases as listed in Idaho Code section 1-2208 on behalf of First District litigants.  

For example, I would like to see judges who have not been lawyers their entire career. Remember, the criteria ask for wisdom, moral courage and, dare I add, good judgment. What is the candidates’ experience with real world troubles and non-lawyers, and not simply alleged criminals? Have they ever worked retail for more than a summer? How about outside sales? Have they done manual labor or machine-based factory work for more than two years? Are they parents? Have they had their assets and children stripped away by a legal system biased toward one or the other sex parent in a nasty divorce? Has their marital property been divvied up such that the least financially capable parent is given the mortgaged home, and then watched while the property is sold out from under the family at foreclosure sale? Have they ever been responsible for private clients with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line, and not simply government-based clients as a prosecutor or public defender? 

In short, we expect wisdom, courage and good judgment from our judges, but where do lifetime lawyers get such attributes, so that they can fully understand the depths of failure and the heights of success? I daresay good judicial qualities are not found on a library shelf or in academia. Raw legal skills may be learned there, but how much humanity and sagaciousness? 

If the State Bar and Idaho Code allow magistrates to be appointed after only two years Idaho residency, after a life in a law library or online with little to no real-world private experience, then how can the First District layperson expect true justice in court? I would cull out candidates with only government experience, including the college professor. That leaves this Commission with Andra Hickey, Matthew Rakes, Kurt Schwab and Donald Terry. 

I do not know any of those four. I pray they have had enough experience with life and clients independent of governmental systems to understand real-life risks and the hopes and fears of private, ordinary people. I hope they know that even though magistrates handle a lot of former Chancery cases, such as probate, family law and estates, they are obligated to use the law first and equity second. Sound judicial discretion is not found in vending machines.  

However, there is little to no accountability for judges once they are on the bench. Where are the personal scorecards? How often do we hear public speeches by our judiciary on the First District legal system? How often is an individual judge overturned on appeal for not following the law? Which judges are sentencing the criminals to actual prison rightly deserved? Which judges are allowing drunks back into motor vehicles? Without those measurements for each judge, First District residents must pray for justice from behind some magic judicial curtain, and hope that those who are appointed are not simply spinning wheels and pressing buttons like the Wizard of Oz. Please give us some people with life experience, and not experts at online computer games or government work!

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Arthur B. Macomber is a Kootenai County private counsel attorney since 2006.