To the editor: As a retired judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, I was interested in your article about the discipline of Judge Emily Cole, whom I do not know.
What caught my attention was the mention that she was elected to the position in 2020 after serving as a deputy district attorney, indicating that she was not a judge appointed by the governor.
As your readers may not know, judicial applicants undergo rigorous evaluation by both their county bar association and the state Commission on Judicial Candidate Evaluations, which makes recommendations to the governor regarding appointments to the court. . Elected judges do not undergo a similar evaluation before being included on the ballot.
A study by Stanford University and the State Commission on Judicial Performance found that judges who were initially appointed were less likely to be disciplined than those who were initially chosen. There is much to praise in the judicial selection process in California, little understood or known by our electorate.
Joe Hilberman, Los Angeles
