San Francisco Superior Court Judge

What Is a Superior Court Judge?

• San Francisco has 52 elected judges that are an integral part of the city’s judicial branch of government

• Judges are lawyers who often come from high-caliber private law firms, the Public Defender’s Office, or the District Attorney’s office

• A judge must have been a practicing attorney for at least 10 years in order to be eligible

• Superior Court Judges in each California county can be appointed by the Governor or elected by voters

• Superior Court Judges can serve unlimited six-year terms

Why You Should Care

Judges influence public safety. They decide how criminal cases proceed, they provide sentences, and—most importantly, lately—they decide whether or not someone accused of a crime is detained before their trial. 

California has been moving to replace pretrial detention with fairer alternatives such as release with monitored check-ins. But the move away from pretrial detention has created a “revolving door” effect: people are arrested, processed into custody, then let back onto the streets to possibly commit the same crime. The offenders the District Attorney’s Office is most concerned about here in San Francisco are alleged drug dealers as the city battles an unprecedented opioid addiction crisis—and the DA’s Office finds itself at odds with the judges. Despite over a hundred attempts by the DA’s office to hold alleged dealers in custody, all but a handful have been released.

Lack of voter education around judges’ roles in public safety can allow subtle political influence over the judiciary to fester undetected. In 2018, four Public Defenders ran against incumbent judges. None of them won that time around, but in 2020, two Public Defenders became judges—there are now eight sitting judges in the San Francisco Superior Court who used to be Public Defenders. As we saw with the election of former Public Defender Chesa Boudin to the role of District Attorney, an imbalance between those who defend the perpetrators and those who defend the victims in the criminal justice system can skew that system in one direction.

Our Vision for this Office

Every election cycle, voters find it hard to discover information about the judges they see on their ballots. That’s because it’s unethical for candidates to speak specifically about how they would try hypothetical cases—it would show their bias.

So how do we know if we like a candidate? We can pay attention to their resume and elect judges from a balanced variety of backgrounds. We can also hope that a judge will be able to balance compassion for the individual while also recognizing the role they play in making decisions for the common good in criminal trials.