Texas Chief Justice Wants Reform

Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court Wallace Jefferson is the latest chief justice to ask for an end to partisan judicial elections. The article gives details about the chief justice’s “passionate plea for reform.” He also asked for a commission to be created to investigate the systematic problem of wrongful convictions, and how to prevent them from happening in the future.

He gave the statistic that four out of five people think a judge’s decision is influenced when a contributor is before the court. He advocated a merit selection system that allows a governor to appoint judges, but once the first term expires the voters decide whether to keep the judge in a “retention election.” In the election, the judge would not have opposition or give party identification.

In an effort to keep the choice of judges as void of politics as possible, the pool of candidates the governor would choose from would be selected by a diverse nominating committee. I am pleasantly surprised at the chief justice and hope the Legislature does move to find a more impartial way of electing judges. The idea of having a nominating committee to select competent candidates sounds great but the only way that will work is if they do not know the party affiliation of the judges either.

The notion of a judge being from a certain party is a breeding ground for corruption. The chief justice thanked Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, who filed legislation to create nonpartisan retention elections. The bad news is that the legislation faces an uphill battle since the State has not been eager to alter the process.