For a while David Letterman ran a segment on his show in which a performer presented an act and then Dave and his bandleader discussed whether what they just saw amounted to anything.
I feel that way about this column.
I have for you today the matter of a couple of dozen anonymous lawyers relating what they think about the combatants for chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court--Associate Justice Courtney Goodson and Circuit Judge Dan Kemp.
The information that follows is at least as relevant as the television advertising in this race. If a national dark-money group can say the nonsense it's saying about Goodson, and if Goodson can brag that she's endorsed by the NRA and say the nonsense she's saying about Kemp, then I am comfortable relating what a couple of dozen actual Arkansas lawyers who worked in their courts say about them.
In 2014 retired prominent lawyer Sam Perroni established a nonprofit entity called the American Foundation for Judicial Accountability to let lawyers rate the judges before whom they'd practiced.
The idea was to refer the raw data to a neutral third-party administrator to compile and make reports so that an outlet would exist to help us assess our elected judges according to the views that lawyers held of them.
Perroni created a website--judicialrating.com--where lawyers can go and both rate the judges according to multiple-choice answers and offer comments that Perroni says must be kept anonymous so that lawyers may speak freely. The lawyers must verify themselves by Bar Association number, but only the third-party administrator sees that.
So now Perroni has sent along a special report on Goodson and Kemp. He stresses it is interim, released early before the election, and that a full report will be out in June.
The findings thus far somehow manage to be woefully scarce, uneventfully nondescript and potentially relevant and helpful.
The composite rating of Goodson is based on a mere 14 lawyer participants. The rating of Kemp is based on but 12.
For all the criticisms being leveled at Goodson and Kemp in the current environment, these few lawyers declare them fair and competent generally, but with specific shortcomings.
First, Goodson: She got all 4's, meaning "most of the time," to questions about whether she was fair and competent and courteous.
But on the question of whether the Supreme Court generally was inclined to try to achieve a desired result rather than render a decision based on facts and controlling law, the lawyers said, by a 54-46 majority, which seems to indicate mathematically that not all 14 lawyers answered, that the high court was more interested in a desired result.
As to whether the Supreme Court "often relies on contrived procedural default to avoid deciding difficult issues," the participating lawyers said by a 58-42 majority that it relies on contrivance.
My best guess is that the participating lawyers voted 7-6 and 8-5 on those two questions. So we don't want to make too much of what we have there.
But, on the other hand, that's fairly serious business--that any majority of any group of lawyers believes the state Supreme Court seeks a predetermined solution rather than justice based on the law. It no doubt reflects the wholly fabricated delay in the same-sex marriage case, which Goodson helped manipulate.
It falls in line with former Attorney General Dustin McDaniel's public claim that this Supreme Court had become "result-oriented," meaning it figured out what it wanted to rule and then fashioned reasoning to back into that predetermined outcome.
Goodson bears much of the blame. At times she has done her judging as an ambitious politician.
Kemp was subjected to a slightly different rating system because he is a trial judge and not appellate judge: He got all 2's, meaning "hardly ever," on negative questions such as whether he is unfair, and all 4's, meaning "most of the time," on positive questions such as whether he is competent and even-handed and patient and that he issues clear and understandable orders.
But I was struck by two of the anonymous comments, one that Kemp is "out of his depth when constitutional issues arise" and another that he has difficulty "controlling court."
Whether those are wrong or right, fair or unfair, insightful or sour grapes, the context is relevant.
Appellate law centers on constitutional issues, not procedural ones.
And here's something that would prove hard to control for a person lacking command of a local trial proceeding: This soap opera of a Supreme Court, where Goodson, Jo Hart and Karen Baker were so contentious and combative that they wrested control from the civil, courtly and now-late chief justice, Jim Hannah.
So I offer this highly limited data and these regrettably anonymous comments as potential aids to voters in trying to make an informed decision.
You know who I'm for, if that matters. If you're new to this space--Kemp.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 02/25/2016