"I strenuously object to the ILR's taking the opinions of just a few attorneys who may never have set foot in Louisiana and making pronouncements about our courts," [Chief Justice] Kimball said in a statement released this week. "Whether we're rated highly or poorly, this survey is not a valid measure of the efficiency or fairness of Louisiana's courts." …
Kimball noted a study by Cornell University law and statistics professor Theodore Eisenberg, who said the Chamber survey "lacks elementary social scientific objectivity." The respondents to the survey are not required to have any experience in the states they rank but only need to say they are "somewhat familiar" with a state, Eisenberg said.
"A person can be 'somewhat familiar' with a state's courts because of a single high-profile case or because of a novel or movie based in that state," said Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Greg Guidry, who is on the ad hoc committee. "Those might be honest perceptions, but they have no validity."
Back in 2000, the New York Times covered the issue of
attacks on judges, quoting Georgia Supreme Court Justice Leah J. Sears who
noted the difficult challenge for judges: “[T]he target of false accusations in
a race for the bench cannot fully respond to them: in addition to the rules
forbidding candidates to mislead voters, Georgia, like most states, has rules
that bar judicial candidates from discussing how they would vote on issues that
might come before them. 'He could pretty much say anything,’ Justice Sears said
of [her judicial election opponent], 'and I could not answer. As a judge, I am
stuck.’”
Speaking of Professor Eisenberg, whom Cornell cites as one
of the “foremost authorities on the use of empirical analysis in legal
scholarship” (his reputation and work speak for themselves), the Chamber got Humphrey Taylor, Chairman of the Harris Poll, to try to smear
Prof. Eisenberg with the suggestion he may have been paid to do his critique –
which he clearly was not and has said so.
Check out the comments here.
Dare we paraphrase Joseph Welch at this point? (“Let us not assassinate this lad further, Mr. Taylor. You've done
enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir?)
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