Kentucky

Judicial vacancies.  Even without the questionable tabling of seeking nominations in an untimely manner and in probable violation of the state's constitutional mandate of "shall" (Section 118) to save some money by adding financial demands to the retirement system, I am still bumfuzzled regarding the obscure way the judicial vacancy announcements are made.... or should I say not made.

Posting a judicial vacancy in the courthouse doors or hidden in the "judicial vacancies" pages at the AOC's site with a nondescript link seems to give the execution of filling these offices short shrift.  The state has an "email press release system" which the AOC uses to announce everything from local appellate arguments to stump speeches or appearances by judges and justices but is not used for announcing judicial vacancies.  Heck, the roads departments even use the system to announce road closings, etc.

If these announcements do make the newspaper, then they are definitely in the obscure section of the Courier Journal to which I read daily in printed format.  And since the ever decreasing size makes the paper easier to read and harder to hide stuff in those pages, I am surprised I have not seen the announcements, if any, for Jefferson County.

Plus, there are two-state wide blogs of general interest to the legal community.  Mine (www.KentuckyLawReview.com) and Judge Billingsley's LawReader (www.LawReader).  I know I would post a competently prepared and typed press release if received (which would be a lot easier than navigating and copying the PDF versions on line....  ASCII would be nice.... Hint.).

Now enough lead-in.

I just happened to peruse the judicial vacancies page with a nondescript link from the AOC's main page and discovered hidden among the judicial vacancy announcements a new one.  This new one was as the top (probably due to the district number rather than recency) and among all the other judicial announcements (including those with expired deadlines).

To make matters worse.  I could not download it at the time.  Hopefully, the links are working when you read this (and the time for applying has not expired).

Here it is: 

2nd Circuit, 1st Division

Notice (49KB-PDF)

Questionnaire (19KB-PDF)