Family Law Judges - Tell us what you think
Rate each Judge involved with your case. What did you think of them?
Help build our ratings allowing the performance of different judges to be compared – and publicly available.
We believe that the outcome of a family law case is fundamentally dependent on the identity of judge that hears the case. (Judges themselves would, of course, deny this as they would say that
each judge would always put the child first, so they would all make the same decisions!).
Such a claim is nonsense of course. Only a fool could maintain judges make decisions independent of their life experiences, level of knowledge [or ignorance], their interest in the case on the day and their own prejudices.
Even within the legal industry the likelihood of certain judges making certain decisions is widely understood. For example, if you visit a solicitor or barrister to discuss your case, the first question they will always ask is “Which judge have you got?”.
Your answer will then usually be followed by a remark like “well that’s a problem because he is quite down on fathers who ask for residence” or “she likes to think of herself as a progressive judge so we might be in for a chance here”.
We are quite certain that; if the same case with the exact same evidence was heard by three different family court judges on the same day, the chances of them all making the same decisions or orders is essentially nil.
This in itself poses a mockery of their claim that the decisions will be “in the best interests of the child”. If Judge 1 is right, then surely Judges 2 and 3 have not made the best choice for the children? On the other hand, if Judge 3 is right then we must question what Judge’s 1 & 2 think is in the child’s best interests.
Because nothing more than an individual judge’s personal whims and preferences are key to the outcome of a case, it’s even more a pity that their work is totally secret and they are effectively unaccountable – as they answer to no-one.
We hope this survey will start the process of making these people accountable for their actions.
This is an example of the sort of thing we’d like to be able to publish after we have enough survey results in. Scores are assessments from 0 to 100, where an “OK” survey result down the line represents a pass with a score of 50, and 100 would represent “very good” for all qualities.
