What happens when personal safety and privacy collide with the publics right to know?
Ask the political leaders of Beaver County, Pa., who wrestled with the question this spring and decided that when it comes to judges’ homes addresses, the citizenry has a right to share in that information. “We are trying to disseminate this information as much as we can,” said county solicitor Myron Sainovich, whose efforts helped ensure that judges’ addresses could be easily found in county land records online. The flap started when Judge Robert Kunselman ordered that judges’ names be taken off the assessor’s online property search, public-access terminals and a monthly listing of properties issued on CD. He posed it as a simple measure to help keep judges safe. “Judges are always receiving threats,” he said. Sometimes those threats are realized. In 2005, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony from Judge Joan Lefkow, an Illinois judge whose mother and husband were killed by a former litigant. Lefkow’s home address had been posted on the Internet by a member of a white su
