New Yorkers can look up a restaurant’s health grade, a school’s test scores, or an elected official’s voting record. Until recently, they could learn almost nothing about the judges who make life-changing decisions every single day. 

Oded Oren knows this gap firsthand. As a public defender in the Bronx, he appeared before the same judges week after week and gained the knowledge every courthouse regular has: which judges set bail more often, which get reversed on appeal, and which engage seriously with the legal arguments before them. But Oded noticed that this knowledge rarely reached the people charged with evaluating judges. Voters, judicial delegates, judicial selection committee members — even judicial administrators — were flying blind.

So Oded walked away from the courtroom and built Scrutinize: New York’s first and only judicial transparency organization. Scrutinize collects data on all 1,200 New York state judges. It then analyzes this data and publishes this information in an accessible format on its Judicial Profiles platform. That way, New Yorkers can use data to understand a judge’s record, compare judges, and draw their own conclusions.

In its first year, more than 150,000 New Yorkers used Scrutinize’s platform. Voters used it to research the judges on their ballots, decision makers to vet judges up for reappointment, advocates to call for judicial accountability, and journalists to shed light on a byzantine court system. Even judges themselves consulted it.

It is a decisive moment for the city and the state, and Scrutinize’s data is needed more than ever. Over the next two years, City Hall will decide whether to reappoint more than 40 judges, and within a few years, at least four seats on the state’s highest court will open. Oded is working to make sure that those decisions happen in the open and are informed by data. He believes such transparency can deliver stronger, more fair courts that New Yorkers can trust.