Reading today's RJ is a lot like being stuck in Punxatawney, Pa.

Once again, the paper  believes the best way to offer information about judges running for re-election is to ask attorneys who appear before the bar to rate the judges. http://www.lvrj.com/news/survey-invites-attorneys-83323252.html

Readers of the RJ will be having the worst days of their lives, over and over, all election year.

It is notoriously hard to give the public information about judicial candidates. Judicial canons make it nearly impossible to discern how a potential judge would rule or even what forms the basis of his or her judicial philosophy. Some judges hide behind the canons and others freely talk about constitutional construction and their philosophies.

So we understand the need to ferret out some form of other information. But Judging the Judges isn't worth the tax-free ink that goes into its production.

The RJ got smoked a few years ago when the LA Times came to town and did a scathing report about the Clark County judicial system, which the big paper said was fraught with conflict in large part because judges seek campaign money from the attorneys who must appear before them. http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jun/08/nation/na-vegas8

The RJ's Judging the Judges is really no different. The attorneys may be the best ones to decide which judges are most professional, but they also are the ones with the most interest in knocking a judge who's ruled against them, or helping one who has ruled in favor of their client.

The survey may provide an interesting civics lesson over at the UNLV law school, but as an election tool, it sheds little light.

It's also an example of a project the RJ will sink some resources into. It's likely the Special Projects team, aka Men of Few Bylines, will be taxed with poring over the survey results. And the paper hires an outside firm to do the data processing. There's even a web URL designated for local attorneys to send in their survey results.

By and large past surveys show most of the judges are great. The ones with the lowest ratings get the most coverage. Typically those atop the list are a few percentage points above the next judge and therefore get their own story. The rankings typically make their way into RJ election guides (another useless public service we'll talk about later this year).

If this is public service reporting, it's more like providing a public service to the incumbent judges in their re-election bids.

And what can really be gleaned anyway from an attorney rating a judge "more than adequate," "adequate," or "less than adequate?"

We could look at almost every story in the RJ and rank it similarly. Would readers be served by that function?

The Judging the Judges time loop began in 1992 and in recent years serves as the biennial justification for the paper's team of Men of Few Bylines. We wished we could get beyond Groundhog Day, but someone's got to monitor the Old Media time warps.