Marylin Pierre

The Activist - Montgomery County, Maryland & Beyond

You'll learn about:

• Inspired by Thurgood Marshall
• Running to achieve more diversity on the bench - outside the current appointment system
• Need for More Attention to Juvenile Law in Montgomery County
• Judgeships in Montgomery County
• • 8 people running for 7 positions
  • Marylin the only one who wasn’t appointed
  • 7 judges are running to retain their appointed seats
  • These judges are appointed by the Governor
  • Judges must run during the first election after appointment to retain their seats
  • Their seats are rarely challenged

• On the process of appointing judges and incumbent judge advantages in the election
• • Judge candidates must fill out applications for bar associations
  • Bar associations make recommendations to the Governor’s Commission that recommends judge candidates to the Governor (the Governor appoints the members of the commission)
  • Governor appoints attorneys to become judges
  • Lots of politics involved in the process - the bar associations evaluate judge applicants, submit recommendations to the Governor’s commission and the Governor’s Commission sends a couple of recommendations for each vacancy
• Is the judge selection system just? Should we have a different system?
• • Perhaps not completely fair in Montgomery County
  • Each county bar association is powerful
  • Other Maryland counties do not charge a fee for judge candidates to apply for a judgeship candidate review - MoCo private bar associations charge $100
  • The MoCo bar association has 4 representatives out of the 13 total on the Governor’s Commission
  • The MoCo Commission reveals to other candidates before the commission how they voted on all the other candidates. The other bar associations don’t do this.
  • Yet - there is an ability to run for judge without an appointment.
• On Judges and Understanding People Coming Before the Court
• • Lack of Understanding / Empathy Persists in Courts
• Circuit Courts in Montgomery County
• • Appeals Function (From State Agency Administrative Process Findings)
  • Family Law Cases are the bulk of the cases
• Office of Administrative Hearings
• • Administrative Law Judges
• On the Occasional Inhumanity / Humanity of the Justice System
• • Depending on if the court identifies with the person being judged
• After 18 months in Montgomery County, Judges rotate into different dockets (juvenile law to another type of law)