Susan McDunn had been a lawyer only nine years when she decided to run for Cook County circuit judge in 1990. She ran because she thought she was perfect for the job. “I know what my giftedness is,” she says. “I’m an extremely fair person and have been since I was a child. I have very strong analytical abilities. But my most important quality is character.”
In Illinois, circuit judges serve six-year terms, after which they must win a retention election if they want to keep their jobs–jobs that now pay $150,000 a year. Voters are asked if the judges should be retained, and at least 60 percent of the votes cast for each has to be yes.
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In 1998 and ’99 McDunn blocked adoptions by two lesbian couples. In each case the prospective adoptive parent sought, with her partner’s approval, to adopt her partner’s child. Social service investigators gave the prospective parents glowing reviews, and the children’s court-appointed advocate endorsed both adoptions. But McDunn said she couldn’t tell if the adoptions were in the best interests of the children without a hearing in which evidence was presented that adoptions by lesbians were not in the children’s best interests. She appointed the Family Research Council, a Washington, D.C., group opposed to gay adoptions, to be a “secondary guardian” to the children in the cases.
The women’s lawyers asked the presiding judge of McDunn’s division to remove her from the cases, saying she was biased against them, and the presiding judge granted the request. The presiding judge then took over the cases and approved the adoptions. But McDunn, who’d been transferred to traffic court, voided the approvals and continued issuing orders in the cases, contending the presiding judge had no authority to remove her or to make his rulings.
After she was cleared, McDunn was reassigned to a courtroom in the Daley Center, where she now presides over cases involving personal injury and property damage.
Then there’s McDunn’s gender. Only one woman judge has ever been dumped in Cook County, and voters have shown a particular fondness for female judicial candidates in recent elections. In 2002 only 25 of the 61 judges up for retention were women, yet the top 15 finishers in terms of votes were all women. Nine of them had distinctly Irish names, including Kathleen Kennedy, Carol McCarthy, and Kathleen McGury.
The retention committee is complaining this year, as it has before, about the small number of voters who punch no on each judge–out of spite or cynicism or who knows what. An automatic no vote is “irresponsible,” according to the committee’s Web site, and endangers “the judicial establishment, our government and our way of life.”
