The short answer: When evaluating a judicial candidate, there are two different questions worth understanding. Is this person qualified to serve as a fair, competent, independent judge? And what experience or perspective would this person bring to the judiciary as a whole?
The first question focuses on the individual candidate. The second focuses on institutional composition, meaning the mix of professional backgrounds and experiences represented on a court. These are not opposing teams or two mutually exclusive ways of voting. They are different parts of the same decision.
You do not need a law degree to understand the distinction. You do need to know what the available evidence can tell you, and where it stops.
First, what are judges actually supposed to do?
A legislator can campaign on changing the law. A judge has a different job: hearing the parties, applying the law, protecting fair procedure, and issuing legally supportable decisions. A candidate’s political popularity, by itself, does not establish that they can perform those duties.
The American Bar Association’s Model Code of Judicial Conduct identifies independence, integrity, impartiality, competence, and diligence as central judicial obligations. State rules have their own governing language; California’s standard on preventing bias likewise emphasizes impartial treatment in court interactions.
The type of court matters, too. A trial judge may oversee evidence, witnesses, motions, and proceedings that directly affect people’s lives. An appellate justice usually reviews questions arising from lower-court decisions. Judicial elections also differ by jurisdiction. In California, superior court judges serve six-year terms and may face contested elections, while Supreme Court and Court of Appeal justices face retention elections. The California judicial branch explains these differences.
The first lens: Evaluate the individual judge
The central question is: What does the evidence show about this person’s readiness and ability to serve?
This is the individual-merit approach. It looks at the candidate rather than starting with what kind of person the court might need more of.
Useful considerations include:
- Legal competence: Relevant experience, legal knowledge, written work, and the ability to reason through complicated issues.
- Integrity and independence: Documented ethical conduct, conflicts of interest, and the ability to resist improper pressure.
- Fairness and temperament: How the candidate handles disagreement, treats participants, and respects due process.
- Professional evaluations: What qualified reviewers concluded, how they conducted the review, and what limits their findings have.
- Actual judicial performance, when available: Decisions, conduct, case management, and the reasons for any documented reversals or discipline.
These are not invented standards. The ABA’s federal judicial evaluation process, for example, examines integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament while distinguishing those qualifications from political ideology.
One number rarely settles the question. Years in practice measure time, not necessarily quality. The number of jury trials measures experience, not fairness. An appellate reversal needs context: the legal issue, the reason for reversal, and whether the ruling reflects individual error or a change in law.
The second lens: Consider the judiciary as a whole
The central question is: What would this person’s experience add to the court they are joining?
This is the institutional-composition approach. It considers the wider judiciary, not just one candidate’s résumé.
Judges arrive from different parts of the legal system. Some previously prosecuted criminal cases. Others represented people accused of crimes, worked in civil legal aid, handled family disputes, defended businesses, or served in government and private practice. These jobs expose lawyers to different kinds of clients, institutions, and legal problems.
A voter interested in court composition may ask whether those backgrounds are broadly represented on the bench. For example, a September 2026 Brennan Center study of state supreme courts found that 40% of sitting state high court justices had prosecutorial experience, compared with 10% who had public defender experience. Career categories can overlap.
That is useful national context, but it does not establish the composition of a particular county trial court, including Los Angeles Superior Court. To make a local composition claim, a researcher would need reliable information about the people actually serving on that bench.
Nor does a more varied set of professional backgrounds automatically establish better outcomes. Representation and qualifications are different questions, and the value a voter assigns to each involves judgment.
Does being a prosecutor or public defender tell us how someone will rule?
It tells us something important about what work they have done. It does not tell us how they will decide every case.
A prosecutor’s experience may involve evaluating evidence, working with witnesses, and applying criminal statutes. A public defender’s experience may involve challenging government evidence, preserving constitutional objections, and representing clients who have less institutional power. Both backgrounds can provide courtroom skills. Neither guarantees impartiality or a particular judicial philosophy.
There is research suggesting that professional experience can matter statistically. In a study published in The Journal of Politics in 2026, Allison Harris and Maya Sen examined federal criminal sentencing and found that defendants assigned to judges who had worked as public defenders were, on average, less likely to be incarcerated. The analysis focused on federal sentencing, not on all judicial work or on any candidate in a local election.
This distinction is essential: a pattern found across many cases is not a prediction about one person. Treating a candidate’s former job as conclusive proof of future rulings goes further than the evidence supports.
A real example: Why two evaluations can differ
Our 2026 Los Angeles County Superior Court Office 64 guide compared Maria Ghobadi, whose experience includes prosecution, and Rhonda A. Haymon, whose experience includes public defense. The article examined individual qualifications, professional evaluations, reported controversies, and the limits of the available record.
It also made an unusual distinction visible. The guide presented an editorial assessment using sherafy.com‘s Civic Outcomes Standard, while the author separately disclosed a different personal preference that placed particular weight on public-defense experience and the relationship between individuals and state power.
Those are different kinds of judgment. An evidence framework asks what the documented record establishes under stated criteria. A personal preference may give additional importance to a type of experience or civic priority. The two can diverge even when the underlying facts are not in dispute.
There is a further limit worth making explicit: placing personal value on public-defense experience is not, by itself, a statistical study of the court’s composition. Establishing that a particular court has too little or too much of a given professional background requires court-specific data.
The lesson from Office 64 is not which candidate to choose. It is that readers should be able to see the evidence, the editorial method, and the author’s personal priorities as separate things.
Two questions, and two ways of using evidence
The distinction becomes clearer when we separate what someone is evaluating from how carefully they evaluate it.
| What is being evaluated? | Evidence-based inquiry | Shortcut or assumption |
|---|---|---|
| The individual candidate | Examine relevant work, independent assessments, documented conduct, and limits of the record. | Assume years of experience, a familiar title, or an endorsement proves judicial ability. |
| The wider judiciary | Examine who serves on the court, their varied professional backgrounds, and research relevant to the court’s actual work. | Assume a candidate’s past job proves the entire court is imbalanced or predicts how the candidate will rule. |
A shortcut like “former prosecutor” or “former public defender” is a heuristic: a limited piece of information used to make a larger judgment. Heuristics can help someone identify what to research next. They become misleading when the shortcut replaces the research.
Likewise, a published qualification rating can be informative without explaining everything about a candidate. It matters how that rating was produced.
What should you make of bar association ratings?
Bar ratings are assessments of professional qualifications. They are not election results, and they should not be mistaken for a complete explanation of how someone would perform as a judge.
For example, the Los Angeles County Bar Association (LACBA) evaluates judicial candidates individually, not as a head-to-head contest between the two people running for the same seat. As LAist’s reporting on the process explains, the committee interviews candidates and references, but its underlying candidate-specific investigations are confidential. Voters see the published assessment, not every reason behind it.
LACBA is a voluntary professional association. Its election evaluations are separate from the State Bar of California’s Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation, which evaluates prospective judicial appointees identified by the governor.
The useful question is not simply, “Which label did this person receive?” It is, “What did the reviewers evaluate, what evidence did they have, and what can I independently check?”
A simple five-question checklist
If a judicial race still feels overwhelming, start here:
- What job is this person seeking? Identify the court and whether you are comparing candidates or considering a retention election.
- What do we know about individual qualifications? Look for credible evaluations, relevant legal work, documented ethics findings, and actual performance where available.
- What does professional background tell us? Understand what each candidate has done without assuming that career history determines future rulings.
- Am I thinking about this person or the court as a whole? Both can be relevant, but do not substitute national statistics for facts about the local bench.
- Where does the evidence end and my judgment begin? Separate verified facts, reasonable inferences, disputed allegations, missing information, and the priorities you personally assign to them.
A useful place to check documented discipline in California is the Commission on Judicial Performance’s public decisions database. It includes public disciplinary decisions, but proceedings that do not result in public charges or discipline generally remain confidential. The absence of a public disciplinary decision is therefore not a complete performance review.
Questions readers often ask
Is a former public defender or prosecutor automatically a better judicial candidate?
No. Either background may provide relevant skills. It is not a substitute for examining competence, ethics, temperament, and suitability for the particular court.
Should I treat a bar association rating as the final word?
No single rating contains every relevant fact. Its meaning depends on the criteria, process, independence, transparency, and information available to the evaluators. Compare it with other credible records without inventing problems unsupported by evidence.
Is considering court composition the same as voting for political outcomes?
Not necessarily. Considering professional representation can be an inquiry into a court’s range of experience. Assuming a candidate will deliver particular political outcomes based solely on career history is a different and much less certain claim.
What if there isn’t enough reliable information?
Say so. An unanswered question is not evidence for or against a candidate. Good research identifies missing information instead of filling the gaps with confidence it has not earned.
The bottom line
Judicial elections involve both the person who may exercise judicial authority and the institution that person would join. The first can be examined through qualifications, conduct, and professional evaluations. The second can be examined through reliable evidence about the court’s composition and relevant research.
Neither approach turns professional background into destiny. And neither eliminates the role of personal judgment. The goal of a useful voting guide is to make those distinctions visible so readers can reach their own informed conclusions.
References and Further Reading
Judicial duties and qualifications
- American Bar Association, Model Code of Judicial Conduct. Sets out model principles of judicial integrity, impartiality, competence, diligence, and independence. It is a model code; applicable state rules govern state judges.
- American Bar Association, Supreme Court Evaluation Process. Explains a federal nominee evaluation framework based on professional qualifications rather than ideology. It is not the evaluation system for Los Angeles judicial candidates.
- California Judicial Branch, Judicial Selection: How California Chooses Its Judges and Justices. Explains the different selection and election systems for California trial judges and appellate justices.
- California Rules of Court, Standard 10.20: Court’s Duty to Prevent Bias. Describes California courts’ responsibilities relating to impartiality and bias.
- California Commission on Judicial Performance, Public Decisions Database. Searchable public judicial discipline records, with important confidentiality limits.
Research on court composition and experience
- Brennan Center for Justice, State Supreme Court Diversity: September 2026 Update. National data on state high court composition, including prior prosecutorial and public-defense experience. It is not a census of county trial judges.
- Allison P. Harris and Maya Sen, How Judges’ Professional Experience Impacts Case Outcomes, The Journal of Politics (2026). Peer-reviewed research examining associations between prior public defender experience and federal criminal sentencing outcomes.
How evaluations work and how sherafy.com applies them
- LAist, How the LA County Bar Association Rates Judicial Candidates. Explains the rating process, individualized assessments, and why candidate-specific deliberations are not fully public.
- State Bar of California, Rules for the Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation. Provides the rules for a distinct process evaluating prospective judicial appointees.
- sherafy.com, The Civic Outcomes Standard. Describes the site’s evidence framework and its treatment of facts, uncertainty, and public-interest criteria.
- sherafy.com, Los Angeles County Superior Court Office 64 Guide (2026). The worked example showing the distinction between an editorial evaluation and a separately disclosed personal preference.
Editorial currency note: Judicial election systems, candidates, ratings, court memberships, and disciplinary records can change. The sources and specific 2026 examples above were reviewed October 20, 2026. The evaluation framework is intended to remain useful beyond that election.
