Want to Know about Judicial Selection? Learn from the Best.

A group of district court judges gathered at the School last week for a class focused on the establishment of school justice partnerships, a central component of the Raise the Age legislation. The class was productive, but there was an elephant in the room that kept distracting everyone. If you’ve been keeping up with the General Assembly’s work over the past month, you likely can call the elephant by name. The elephant was House Bill 717. This bill, which was introduced before the General Assembly adjourned its 2017 regular session, redraws several of the State’s existing superior and district court judicial districts. Its provisions are currently being hammered out in the House Select Committee on Judicial Redistricting. The chairman of the committee is Representative Justin Burr, a five-term representative from Montgomery and Stanley Counties and one of the bill’s primary sponsors. The latest version of the bill is available here, and the latest version of the statewide map is available here. Not surprisingly, elected judicial officials are keenly interested in the composition of their judicial districts. I’ll wager that every judge from an affected district can explain in detail how the proposed amendments might alter the bench in his or her area of the state. I cannot – so I will not try to do so here. Instead, I’d like to tell you about how the committee began its work and how you too can get up to speed on judicial selection in North Carolina. The first speaker. The committee convened on [...]