Legal Question in Family Law in Missouri

Re: Legal chain of command

Judges are subject to Rules of Ethics found inthe Supreme Court Rules. Rarely the office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel may investigate a Judge for the possible violation of those Rules. Other than that, Judges are supposed to be subject to the law just like anyone else. In out-state Missouri I suppose that you could say that Judges are responsible to the voters who can vote for someone else the next time that particular Judgeship is up for election. Technically, the people vote periodically to retain Judges, and you could vote against a certain Judge being retained. But, the voters are woefully uninformed when it comes to these retention elections, and (in my opinion) vote for the wrong reason or no reason at all most of the time. There are a number of Judges who should not be retained in any given retention election, but the people always retain every one. In our last election, the voters in Missouri even voted to retain a Judge who had died before the election! You normally can not attack a judge just because you do not like the results in any given case. However, if there are legal reasons and you can afford it, you might be able to succeed on appeal.