Iowa should address gaps in judicial accountability

After a stunning 2010 vote to remove three Iowa Supreme Court justices from the bench for their role in legalizing same-sex marriage, Iowa's judicial branch made a smart call.

Iowa's courts, led by the Supreme Court, would seek to be more open and engage with the citizens they serve. If a lack of understanding of the courts was part of the problem, transparency would be part of the solution. High court justices would appear more often in public, even hearing oral arguments in communities across Iowa.

Good impulses. But a report by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity chronicled recently by IowaWatch shows the judiciary has some work to do.

The center gave Iowa an F grade for judicial accountability. It found that Iowa has no publicly accessible process in place to evaluate judges. Financial disclosure forms filed by judges as a defense against potential conflicts of interest are not regularly audited, nor are they easily accessible by members of the public. Iowa has no law, the report found, addressing a judge's ability to move from the bench to the private sector, another potential source of conflict.

The center also dinged Iowa for accessibility to court records. Iowa recently completed its electronic Statewide Data Management System for placing court documents online, but Iowans who aren't judges, lawyers or others involved in cases only can access records at kiosks in county courthouses.

Iowa received high marks for judicial selection, rules barring nepotism and laws limiting gifts and hospitality.

But its deficiencies are significant. The difficulties faced by Iowans in accessing judicial evaluations, financial disclosures and court documents contribute to the very transparency issues the judicial branch sought to address after 2010.

The center's evaluation presents an opportunity to address these issues. We see no reason why judge's financial disclosures can't be more accessible and regularly scrutinized. Iowa has regular judicial retention votes, so the idea of judicial evaluations has merit.

And Iowa should find a way to provide Iowans easy access to digital court documents that doesn't jeopardize release of confidential materials. The federal courts have an online system accessible from any computer. That should be Iowa's goal.

Iowa has a quality courts system. It should keep following its good, post-2010 impulses toward greater transparency and accountability.

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