Judges and the Political Process

When I lived in the South Bay region of California, I really enjoyed eating bagels made at the Manhattan Bread and Bagel Company. I even knew that the owner, Lynn Olson, was a lawyer who had not practiced much, choosing instead to run her business. I’ ve met her a few times, and she’s friendly, smart, and personable. I’ve never talked politics or even the nuts and bolts of law with her.

So now I learn that in recent elections here in California, Olson ran against Judge Dzintria Janavs (pictured), a judge of the Superior Court before whom I had practice. Olsen spent about $100,00 of her own money to run for the seat, and Janavs did what most judges do in California — she barely campaigned, in part because she was busy working and in part because being an incumbent gives one quite a few advantages. Olson could not articulate any real reasons why she was running against Janavs; she did not have any particular beef against Janavs other than that she (Janavs) was a Republican and Olson is a Democrat. Moreover, there seems to be some feeling that Olson picked Janavs as opposed to any other of the many Republican judges in California because Janavs has a foreign-sounding name. (It’s not just foreign-sounding; Janavs was born in Latvia and emigrated here many years ago.)

I’ve practiced before Judge Janavs in the past. She initially ruled against me on the critical motion of the case, and I successfully appealed her ruling. Her incorrect ruling was the result of the fact that the law had changed and the ruling she made was correct according to the law at the time of the ruling, but that was not the law that applied at the time the case was filed, which was the law she should have applied. It’s a subtle distinction and one that most people would have missed. When I came back to her court after getting her decision overturned, she was the personification of professionality about it. The opposing attorney made the same argument against the court’s decision that he had initially, and Judge Janavs looked him in the eye and said, “I agree with you, but the Appellate Department didn’t, and I’m going to do what they said.” She then sent us out into the hall to settle the case, which we finally did. I think it was a remarkable piece of judging on her part — she tried hard to come up with the right answer, accepted her role within the system, meaningfully enforced a decision that she didn’t personally prefer, and got the parties to resolve their differences on their own. If you ask me, these are the things a judge should do, and she did them. Accordingly, had I been registered to vote in Los Angeles County, I would have voted for Judge Janavs.

The voters in Los Angeles County disagreed with me. Olson won.

Yesterday, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed Dzintria Janavs to a newly-opened seat in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. Part of his message in doing so was that he has sympathy for people who are misunderstood on the basis of difficult-to-pronounce names.

I’m of two minds about this. Olson makes a damn good bagel, and she is a lawyer who possesses the statutory and Constitutional qualifications to be a judge. And she was the voters’ choice, even if it looks like she bought the election. Elections get bought sometimes; that’s what happens when an office is open to the democratic process. And I have no way of knowing what kind of a judge Olson will be; perhaps she will turn out to be a good judge. Certainly I want to be respectful of her as I may find myself practicing before her one day soon — and whatever happened in the election, she should be given a chance to perform and then be evaluated on what she did. And the voters did speak, choosing Olson over Janavs. So part of me is upset that the will of the voters to remove Janavs from the bench is being thwarted a little bit.

But I also think that judges need to be insulated from the political process and I have deep misgivings about judicial elections. I know judges in the L.A. Superior Court system are overworked and have too few resources to handle the caseload they have been given. Janavs failed to campaign because she was busy doing the job of being a judge, while Olson was free from those responsibilities, able to leave her business in her husband’s hands, and had a gigantic personal war chest to fund the campaign — and couldn’t articulate a good reason why she wanted to be a judge other than raw politics. Janavs, by all accounts (including my own) was doing a good job and there was no reason whatsoever to remove her from office. She should have been retained.

Hey, I want to be a judge, too, and I think I’d make a pretty good one. But I think I need to wait for an open seat to coincide with the fortunate circumstance of someone being the Governor who knows and trusts me enough to make me a judge. So the larger part of me is pleased with the Governator’s decision to put a well-qualified judge back on the bench where she belongs.

Jeez, I leave California for two years and stuff like this happens.