Sweep Of Judicial Races In Harris County Ressurects Talk Of Non-Partisan Judicial Selection

After Democrats swept nearly ever judicial seat in Harris County last Tuesday, talk of non-partisan, non-electoral judicial selection has again reared its ugly head.

The Houston Chronicle notes:

However, Tom Phillips, the former chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, has long supported an abandonment of partisan judicial races. Elected as a Republican, he even made headway in the Legislature in 2003, as he lobbied for a new selection process in which an independent commission would recommend judicial candidates for appointment based on qualifications, not political affiliation.

He was joined in the crusade by former Texas Attorney General and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Hill, a Democrat.

Phillips said Republican Party bosses killed the bill that proposed these changes, the ultimate irony of which was that Hill’s daughter, Martha Hill Jamison, was one of the casualties of Tuesday’s Harris County massacre.

Jamison, who picked up the cause of merit selection of judges when her father passed away last year, has worked with the American Judicature Society toward that goal. But there is scant evidence of a drive to do it.

“You’ve got a coalition of people who favor the status quo,” said Phillips, who was once a district judge in Harris County.

“This may have been a reform 150 years ago,” he said of partisan judicial races, “but it’s not anymore. Most (judges) don’t want political affiliation.”

Current Texas Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, a Republican, took the occasion of the near-sweep in Harris County to denounce partisan judicial races.

“This is a strange way to select those who guard our legal rights,” Jefferson said in a prepared statement after the polls closed. “It is time to decide whether partisan election is the best means to ensure judicial competence. It has become clear that in judicial elections, the public (particularly in urban areas) cannot cast informed votes due to the sheer number of candidates on the ballot.”

Perhaps some progressives belive that non-partisan judicial selection such as that discussed above is a good idea. I think it is a disaster. Why? Because it is essentially impossible to take politics out of an equation that is at its very roots political.

Taking voters out of the equation is a bad idea. Voters should retain the right to elect the people they want to represent them on the judicial level–whether it is for Texas Supreme Court or a local district court position.

Additionally, where would the judicial selection stop? Would it include constitutional county judges in those counties where that position still hears misdemeanor cases and probate cases? Would it include justices of the peace–a position that isn’t even required to be held by a lawyer, just like that of a constitutional county judge?

It is an interesting idea, but one that isn’t right for Texas. Texas is a big state; some counties in Texas have more district judges than some counties have a total number of elected officials. Taking voters out of that equation is a bad idea.

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