Alaska Employment Law

The Alaska Judicial Council has released a survey of judicial applications and appointments from 1984 through 2007.

Among the Council’s findings are these:

•  A higher percentage of applicants are women, tracking a similar change among the Alaska bar membership. The percentage of women nominated tracked the percentage at which they applied, but the percentage of women appointed has declined substantially.

• Trial court judges’ salaries are higher than the average incomes of bar members and applicants, suggesting that salaries and benefits have been an incentive for attorneys to apply.

• Most applicants had practiced in both the public and private sectors. Applicants with only private sector experience were less likely to be nominated and appointed.

• The Council nominated about the same number of applicants with prosecutorial experience as it did applicants with public defense attorney experience. It nominated applicants with public defense experience at a higher rate than they applied, and prosecutors at about the same rate at which they applied.

• Private practitioners and attorneys who practiced mainly civil law were more likely to apply for superior court, while prosecutors were more likely to apply for district court. Public criminal defense attorneys applied about equally for both types of courts.

• Most applicants appeared in court regularly during the five years immediately preceding their applications. Two-thirds of them had substantial jury trial experience in that same period.

• Applicants with higher survey scores (3.5 and above) were more likely to be nominated. A high score, or high rank in the bar survey for a particular vacancy, did not guarantee nomination.

• There was little difference between nominees and appointees on bar survey scores. 

• Appellate applicants, nominees and appointees had higher average scores than the corresponding trial court groups.

Comment:   The growing absence of women on the bench is particularly apparent in the Fourth Judicial District, where the last woman appointed was Niesje Steinkruger  in 1988 (by Gov. Steve Cowper).  There are nine judges in the District (six Superior Court, three District Court), only one of whom (District Court Judge Jane Kauvar, appointed by Gov. Hammond in 1981) is a woman.  (A number of the District’s Magistrates and Standing Masters are women.)  Governor Palin has made two appointments to the Fourth Judicial District bench, neither of them women.  Both of Palin’s appellate court appointments are men (Dan Winfree to the Supreme Court, and Joel Bolger to the Court of Appeals).