Home

Join the Boycott

Garbage Judges

The Faulty Law
Escambia Proj
Santa Rosa Project
The Okaloosa Project
The Walton Project
Judicial Nominating Comm

The Facts of Divorce

Custody Check List

Court Cases

Links and Support

Parental Alienation
Syndrome

DCF Abuses
Dealing with DCF
Japanese Abductions

The Birth of Judges

Vacant judgeships are filled by selection by the Governor of Florida, and are selected from a slate of nominees supplied by a local Judicial Nominating Commission. The Judicial Nominating Commission, commonly referred to as the JNC, is comprised of mainly of attorneys. The attorneys names are given to the Governor, who appoints each of them to serve on the JNC. In the First Judicial Circuit there is also a non-lawyer, Jarl (J T ) Young serving on the JNC.

The procedure is for the JNC to announce an opening on the Bench and to accept applications from interested lawyers. The applications are reviewed and a background check is conducted of the applicants by members of the JNC. After completion of the background check interviews are held by the members of the JNC during which all of the applicants are individually questioned by the entire panel of the JNC. In The First Circuit this interview lasts twenty (20) minutes. That's right, your judges are picked by the Governor from a slate of candidates who have been subjected to only a twenty minute interview.

The Rules of the JNC dictate that they will solicit public input about the candidates under review; in the last several rounds of judicial appointments no announcement was given to the media of the date or place that the interviews would be conducted, nor was there a provision for seating the public made. The interviews were held in a conference room of the Pensacola courthouse that could barely contain the JNC and the applicant, let alone seat members of the public. One member of the public did attend several of the interviews, and although treated courteously, was never solicited for his input. In fact the actual deliberations are held in secret and the public is excluded from attending the JNC's deliberations or voting on the candidates. This hardly seems to be government in the sunshine; indeed, it seems that the public input demanded by the Rules is being deliberately circumvented by the secretive nature of the JNC's deliberations and the secret voting. How is the public to understand, critique or participate in the process if they are excluded from the very part that results in the selection of the candidates ? Why does the JNC insist upon this secrecy ? What are they hiding ?