Opinion ID: 2600337
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The state's remaining arguments are unpersuasive.

Text: Besides arguing that the Council's evaluations failed to serve the basic purposes of the declaration requirement, the state contends that declarations of candidacy made to the Council in November 2003when the judges submitted their retention questionnaires would be too unreliable to be acceptable in August 2004when the Division's deadline for declarations expired. This argument makes little sense: under this theory, a judge's early declaration filed with the Division itself would be equally unreliable and would become subject to question as the deadline approached. Moreover, in asserting that an early declaration to the Council might not reflect a final decision to run, the state incorrectly assumes that the goal of a declaration requirement is to elicit a final decision, rather than just a clear declaration of present intent. No declaration need ever be final at the time it is madeto the contrary, declared candidates for judicial retention remain free to withdraw from the race and may have their names removed from the ballot unless they act so late in the process that removal is no longer feasible. [41] The state offers no reason to suspect that a judge who decides to withdraw after formally declaring candidacy to the Council would be more likely to withdraw early than a judge who declared directly to the Division. As a final point, the state suggests in its reply brief that the Council's evaluation is legally unacceptable as a declaration because the Council lacked authority to act on behalf of the judges. Relying on the Restatement (Second) of Agency, the state insists that, because the judges failed to manifest consent for the Council to act on their behalf in declaring their candidacy to the Division, and because the Council never consented to undertake this responsibility, no viable agency relationship ever arose. [42] But the state mistakenly focuses on the notion of agency by consentthe topic addressed by the Restatement. The Restatement expressly disclaims any attempt to cover agencylike relationships arising by statute rather than by consent. [43] Here, the Council's duty to evaluate candidates and report its evaluations to the Division arises under a specific provision of law; the Council has always interpreted its mandate as requiring it to evaluate only those judges actually standing for retentionnot all judges eligible to be on the ballot; and judges effectively give their consent to have their declarations of candidacy filed with the Division when they submit their retention questionnaires to the Council-thereby authorizing the Council to treat them as declared candidates and to inform the Division of its evaluation of them as candidates standing for retention.