More Items On The Florida Ballot
On the ballot there are retention votes for 7 judges.
For outsiders, judges on the Florida Supreme Court and District Courts of Appeal are nominated by a separate entity, the Judicial Nominating Commission. The governor then appoints them, but they are subject to a retention vote every six years.
The retention of justice Charles T. Wells of the Florida Supreme Court is on the ballot, and I will vote for him, even though I don’t always agree with him because he is consistent in his decisions. You know where he stands, and that is with the law and Florida constitution. Unlike the US Supreme Court in 2000, Charles Wells doesn’t make things up to suit his personal or political preferences.
On the other hand, I am voting NO! on all six judges up for retention in the First District Court of Appeal.
The entire court, whose district encompasses all of the northern segment of Florida from the Atlantic Coast in Jacksonville to the Perdido River in Pensacola, has a nasty habit of issuing rulings without issuing opinions. They make decisions that affect people’s lives without any explanation at all. You have no idea what they are thinking, or the basis for the decision. They are paid enough that a paragraph or two wouldn’t over-burden them. The only reason I can think of for not issuing an opinion would be that they can’t justify what they did. Well, I can’t justify retaining them.
2 comments
I found that some of the judges did have opinions written. Check out :
http://www.2dca.org/opinions/opinions.shtml
I was not able to make much sense of them, because I was not familiar with the cases.
I was was checking the October 2008 decisions. (not all have written opinions)
Gene, those are opinions for the Second district, these people are in the First district which has, apparently decided not to explain their actions.
I don’t follow actions in the Second district.