Judicial performance review: a balance between judicial independence and public accountability.(Rethinking Judicial Selection: A Critical Appraisal of Appointive Selection for State Court Judges)

Judicial performance review in Colorado is the most sophisticated method in the nation for providing information to voters in judicial retention elections. (1) Colorado has had a commission-based appointive system for judges--with the judges subject to periodic non-contested retention elections--for forty years. In the mid-1980s, some in Colorado thought that retention elections did not provide voters with enough information to hold judges accountable, and they sought to return the selection of judges to contested partisan elections. The performance review concept was a response…