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It’s not just control of Congress that’s up for grabs in 2022: Hundreds of influential state court judgeships, including a quarter of the nation’s state supreme court seats, are on the ballot as well.
Most state court judges, including state supreme court judges, are largely unknown to the public, but they have a profound impact on Americans’ lives.
“The court is already something that no one understands,” Davis Hammett, an activist with Kansas-based youth voter engagement group Loud Light, told Insider. “The number one question I get even people who are engaged: is, ‘Do I retain these judges?’ This is pretty obscure stuff for most people.”
But an estimated 96% of all legal cases in the United States are filed in state courts and fall to the more than 30,000 state judges and 344 state supreme court justices around the country.
Those jurists are the chief architects of the legal landscape in each state, defining the terms of justice under their state’s constitutions and shaping the guardrails of American society with their decisions.
“These courts are as important as they’ve ever been, and poised to become even more important,” Douglas Keith, a counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice who studies state court races, told Insider. Justices for state supreme courts decide whether to overturn lengthy prison sentences, hand down multimillion-dollar civil judgments, hold powerful corporations like pharmaceutical companies and tech giants to account, establishing legal precedent on key issues along the way.
And they’re set to play an even more active role in key issues like redistricting, election and voting laws…Read more.
