About the Kansas Commission on Judicial Performance

General Information

The Kansas Commission on Judicial Performance was created in 2006 by the Kansas Legislature to improve the performance of individual judges and the judiciary as a whole.  The Commission's evaluations of all of the state court trial and appellate judges will be provided to the judges and justices for self-improvement.   In addition, for judges and justices who are subject to retention elections, the Commission's evaluations will be disseminated to the public to help voters make informed decisions about whether to continue those judges and justices in office.

Kansas statutes establish the requirements for membership on the Commission on Judicial Performance.  Members are appointed by the Judicial Council and are required to be persons of outstanding competence and reputation.  Six of the Commission members are chosen from non-lawyers and six Commission members and the Chair are chosen from lawyers or judges.  The statutes also require that at least two Commission members reside in each congressional district.  The Kansas Commission is unique among states having judicial performance commissions in that none of its members are appointed by the Courts and no sitting judges or justices serve on the Commission.

The Commission is required to publicly recommend that judges subject to retention elections either "be retained" or "not be retained."  To make this decision the Commission surveys persons who have sufficient experience with a judge or justice to form an opinion about the performance of the judge or justice.  The Commission has adopted performance standards upon which survey questions are based and has designed confidential surveys that ask those surveyed to evaluate the judge or justice on his or her ability, integrity, impartiality, communication skills, professionalism, temperament, and administrative capacity.  In addition, the Commission is required to consider the judge's or justice's self-evaluation.  The Commission may also rely on any other information which assists in the evaluation of the judge or justice.

A caveat:  On September 4, 2007, the Attorney General of Kansas, Paul Morrison, issued Attorney General Opinion No. 2007-27 in response to the Commission’s request of May 11, 2007.  The Commission’s study of Opinion No. 2007-27 is ongoing and the information on this web page may be altered as a result of the opinion.

Surveys

Because a key part of the Commission’s evaluation of judges and justices is the survey of persons who have sufficient experience with a judge or justice to form an opinion about the performance of the judge or justice, information about the survey process may be of interest.

As background, there are 263 judges and justices in Kansas.  These 263 judges and justices can broadly be divided into two categories, appellate judges, of which there are 20, and trial court judges, of which there are 243.  Appellate judges and justices can further be subdivided into two more groups, Supreme Court justices and Court of Appeals judges.  Trial court judges can also be subdivided into two groups, district judges and district magistrate judges.

Kansas uses two methods to choose its judges, either by merit selection with retention vote or by partisan elections.  All 20 appellate justices and judges and 128 trial court judges in 17 judicial districts are chosen by merit selection.  There are 115 trial court judges in the 14 judicial districts where judicial candidates run in political elections. 

Supreme Court justices serve six-year terms and Court of Appeals judges serve four-year terms.  The following table shows the potential number of justices and judges standing for retention or partisan election in 2008, 2010, and 2012.

The Commission has decided that, once the judicial performance program is fully implemented, surveys about all judges and justices will be conducted quarterly, with the quarterly results combined and used to generate final survey reports and midterm reports.  Once results have been collected for a judge’s or justice’s full term (16 or 24 quarters) the data will be maintained so as to allow calculation of moving averages with the most recent quarterly results added to the data and the oldest quarterly sample removed.

The methodology of conducting surveys about appellate judges and justices will consist of surveying attorneys who have appeared before the appellate courts, appellate court staff attorneys, district judges and other appellate judges.  The methodology of conducting surveys about trial court judges will consist of surveying attorneys and appellate judges who have had professional contact with the judge.  Non-attorneys such as jurors, litigants, witnesses, law enforcement personnel, court staff, probation officers, social services caseworkers, CASA volunteers, and other resource persons who have appeared before or had professional contact with the judge being evaluated will also be surveyed.

The names and addresses of most potential survey respondents will be obtained from three primary trial court databases.  Those are the Johnson County database for judges in Johnson County, the Shawnee County database for judges in Shawnee County, and the State of Kansas FullCourt database for judges in all other counties of the state.

Ideally, the number of completed questionnaires for each judge would be 400 collected over a four-year period.  Twenty-five would be collected each quarter and a moving average would be maintained so that as 25 new surveys are added each quarter, the 25 oldest are deleted. For Supreme Court Justices the rolling average will be maintained over six years, the length of their terms.

Because of time and budget constraints, the target sample size for the first report will be reduced to 200.  Not until after 2012 will the target sample sizes be 400.  Please note the use of the term “target sample size.”  The sample size is a target because for many judges in sparsely populated counties or judicial districts it may not be possible to obtain a cumulative sample of 200 or 400 respondents even after attempting to survey everyone (not just a sample) who has sufficient experience with a judge to form an opinion about the judge’s performance.  In addition, a substantial portion of some judges’ dockets may be cases which prior to April of 2008, were considered confidential and the names and addresses of those persons were not available.  Where the number of potential respondents is large enough, a random sample will be surveyed.  The following table shows the current plan relating to target sample size for merit selected and elected trial court judges.

Because appellate judges and justices generally decide fewer cases than trial judges and there is a relatively small number of attorneys who regularly practice before the appellate courts, it is likely that all attorneys (rather than a sample) who participate in a case before the Supreme Court or a panel of the Court of Appeals will need to be surveyed.  This should result in between 25 to 35 completed surveys per year for each Supreme Court Justice and 50 to 75 completed surveys for each judge of the Court of Appeals.

Appellate judges and justices will also be evaluated by a survey of other appellate judges, those district court judges who have had sufficient experience to form an opinion, and appellate staff attorneys.  These surveys will be conducted in the fourth quarter of the year prior to the judge or justice’s retention election.

Because mailing addresses, telephone numbers and a fairly    high percentage    of e-mail   addresses will be available for attorneys, the attorney surveys will be conducted by mail, telephone, e-mail/web or a combination of all three.  For many of the non-attorneys only their mailing address will be available; thus, questionnaires will have to be mailed.  It is possible that telephone numbers and e-mail addresses may be available for some subpopulations, and if this is the case it will permit these groups to be surveyed using telephone or e-mail/web methodologies.

Reports

Once the judicial performance evaluation process is fully operational Trial Judge Reports and the Appellate Judge Reports will be issued twice during the term of each judge or justice.  The Commission will provide midterm judicial performance evaluation reports if its budget and work schedule allows. Reports for judges subject to retention elections will be issued once in the year that the judge stands for retention, and if a Midterm Survey Report is issued it will be issued approximately in the middle of the judge’s term.  The Survey of Appellate Judges About District Judges will not be included in a Midterm Survey Report for trial court judges and the Survey of Judges About Appellate Judges will not be included in the Midterm Survey Report for appellate judges.  There will also be a Report for elected judges and a midterm judicial evaluation report if the Commission's budget and work schedule allows.  Because the reports on elected judges will not be released publicly, the reports will be issued to the judges during off-election years.  The following chart shows the anticipated schedule for providing the reports to the judges and justices, assuming midterm reports are done.

Report Schedule