What does an Orange County Superior Court judge do?
Superior Court judges oversee trials across all of Orange County. There are more than 100 of them across the court system. These trials cover everything having to do with state and local laws, including family law (such as child custody and divorces), contract disputes, thefts, felony murder, probate (distributing a person’s possessions after they die) and small claims.
A judge’s job is to act as court referee:
- making sure all sides are abiding by the proper rules
- hearing arguments
- handing down rulings based on the evidence presented and their interpretation of the law
If the law is very clear on a given issue, a judge has to stick to it regardless of how they personally feel. In other cases, laws may be ambiguous, and that’s when a judge has to issue their own interpretation of the law. Judges also have a fair amount of discretion when it comes to handing down penalties, such as the length of a sentence for a criminal conviction or the payment sum for a civil case. That’s where it starts to really matter who is in the seat.
Superior Court judges serve six-year terms, but they don’t always have to face reelection when that time is up. They’ll only appear on your ballot if someone challenges their seat at the end of their term. Judges who go unchallenged automatically get reelected into their next term and never appear on the ballot at all.
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