TagState courts

Incumbents tend to do better in elections for any office than newcomers facing incumbents. This is no less true in state supreme court elections. Across all types of state supreme court elections, incumbent justices running for re-election won 93% of the time from 2008-2019. No more than six incumbent justices have lost in a single year during this time frame. 2008 was the year with the lowest incumbent win rate at 89%.

Among the 38 states that conduct elections for supreme court justices, 11 have seen incumbents lose elections from 2008-2019. These were Alabama, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. In the other 27 states, incumbent supreme court justices won re-election 100% of the time from 2008-2019.

Thirty-five states are holding state supreme court elections in 2020. In total, 84 of the nation’s 344 state supreme court seats are up for election.

Of these seats, at the start of 2020:

• 60 are held by non-partisan justices
• 17 are held by Republican justices
• Seven are held by Democratic justices

Twenty-nine states are holding their judicial elections on November 3, 2020. Five states are holding their judicial elections before that date, and one state is holding its judicial elections in December.

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On January 28, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) made her third appointment to the Iowa State Supreme Court when she chose Dana Oxley to fill the vacancy left by Chief Justice Mark Cady.

Reynold’s described Justice Oxley saying, “She’s smart, she’s articulate, she’s hard-working, she brings a breadth of experience to the court.” This will be the first time in the state’s history that two women have shared the bench. Governor Reynolds stated that “We need more women in the courts, yes but I don’t make my decision based on gender. They earned those selections.”

As a result of Oxley’s appointment, five of the seven justices on the court have been appointed by Republican governors. Reynolds previously appointed Susan Christensen and Christopher McDonald. Those two appointments initially moved the court’s balance towards justices appointed by Republican governors. Chief Justice David Wiggins will retire in March 2020. If Reynolds appoints his replacement, six of the seven justices on the Iowa Supreme Court will have been appointed by Republican governors, four of them by Reynolds.

Iowa uses the assisted appointment method to select justices, meaning that the governor must select an appointment from a list of three nominees recommended by the Iowa Judicial Nominating Commission.

In Justice Oxley’s application for nomination, she wrote that during her clerkship with U.S. Appeals Court Judge David Hansen she learned “the art of judicial restraint.” She explained that, “while legal issues may have lurked on the edges of a case that were more interesting than the ones that were brought in the parties’ briefs, our adversarial system works best when lawyers are allowed to bring the issues that are most important to their clients to the courts.” In her application she also claimed that the court should “not blindly apply its prior decisions but must be vigilant in protecting the rule of law.”

Gov. Jay Inslee (D) appointed Bill Bowman to the Washington Court of Appeals on January 24, 2020. Bowman fills the vacancy left by former judge Ann Schindler, who retired effective December 31, 2019.

Bowman previously served as a judge for the King County Superior Court. He held several roles as a superior court judge, including those of assistant chief criminal judge, chief judge of the Maleng Regional Justice Center, and assistant presiding judge, the last of which he held at the time of his appellate appointment.

In addition to his judicial career, Bowman has worked as a trial attorney and was also deputy prosecuting attorney for King County. He earned his J.D. from the California Western School of Law.

Bowman is one of ten Division I judges on the Washington Court of Appeals. Unlike the Washington Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals is a non-discretionary appellate court, meaning it must review and rule on all appeals filed with it.

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On January 21, 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D) appointee to the California First District Court of Appeal—Justice Terri L. Jackson—was unanimously confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments. Justice Jackson is now the first female, African-American justice to sit on the California First District Court of Appeal.

Before her appointment, Jackson served as a judge on the Superior Court of San Francisco from 2002 to 2020. She was also the first African-American woman appointed to the Superior Court of San Francisco. Before serving as a judge, Jackson worked as an attorney and served in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office.

California’s First District Court of Appeal is one of six courts of appeal in California. The First District Court serves the residents of 12 Northern California counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Solano, and Sonoma. The district reviews more than 2,000 criminal, civil, and juvenile appeals and more than 1,300 original proceedings annually.

Justice Jackson replaced Justice Martin Jenkins, who resigned from the bench to serve as Governor Newsom’s judicial appointments secretary. Jenkins served on the California First District Court of Appeal from 2008-2019.

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Additional reading:

• Martin J. Jenkins
• California First District Court of Appeal
• Superior Court of San Francisco County, California
• California Commission on Judicial Appointments