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The Texas Judicial System

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The Texas judicial system is bifurcated, where there are two supreme courts to serve justice. While one of the “highest courts” serves justice to civil cases, the other serves justice to criminal cases. Tom Phillips, former chief justice on the Texas Supreme Court, stated “Of the ways you can elect judges, Texas has one of the worst systems” (Chammah). Judicial elections in Texas have been impacted greatly by campaign contributions from interests’ groups, PAC’s, and law firms. In addition, partisan elections and low voter knowledge has made it more facile for these interest group to lobby their way into the legislative branch, thus, spreading into the judicial branch where elections count the most. Texas elects’ judges, and the awareness …show more content…

Many state supreme courts like Texas, “are now dominated by conservative judges that favor corporate defendants over individual plaintiffs. Republican justices outnumber Democrat justices” (Corriher). Texas supreme court elections may very well cost more than congressional elections. Why? In partisan judicial elections, interests’ groups, who are usually trial lawyers and big business groups, fund judges that could be more “pro-business”, eventually so that they rule in favor of business policies. Because Texas officials are dominantly Republican, Republican judges have dominated and support “pro-business, pro-life, and anti-government” (Corriher). By labeling a judge as a Republican or a Democrat one can tell how little most voters know about how judges will decide about cases. If “voting based solely on a judicial candidate’s political party can lead to controversial results” …show more content…

Most of the “donations” that are given start from thousands and “there’s no limits on how much an individual can give” (Moyer). These vast amounts of money can impact judges court decisions in favor to the groups that funded their campaign elections. It is almost as judges are returning a favor in form of approving certain policies and ruling “pro-business”. Campaign contributions can lead to a corrupt government which now is being regulated by the Judicial campaign fairness act. This act is used to put “limitations on judicial campaign contributions” (lecture). The US Supreme Court has been aware and now has seen what money can buy in Texas, including justice. In Texas, citizens are concerned with politics, and justice for sale. Active reformers in Texas are currently working hard to reverse this result and help restore the ideologies that were once believed

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671 Words | 3 Pages

For partisan judicial elections, candidates are selected by and affiliated with a political party whereas nonpartisan judicial elections “require candidates to campaign unaffiliated with any political party, and they appear on the ballot without a party designation” (Hemmens, Brody, & Spohn, 2013). Partisan elections allowed for judges to be responsive to the same forces as those given to other elected officials; therefore, the concern of this feature caused for a shift leading away from partisan elections to nonpartisan. This is because these elections “reduced the influence party politics have on judicial elections, they also remove party identification as a basis for voters to cast their ballots” (Hemmens, Brody, & Spohn,

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805 Words | 4 Pages

Many of the issues go back to the civil war era, and during this time E.J. Davis was the governor of Texas. During his time as governor Davis used his power to and appointed over 8,000 public officials (Brown et al. 2014, p. 145). Many Anglo Texans have complained that during the time of Davis’s run as Governor he clearly abused the power that was given to him (Brown et al. 2014, p. 300). This was a big reason as to why the people of Texas wanted to limit the power that the governor can have.

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694 Words | 3 Pages

Proponents of Nevada's system of electing judges have argued that competitive election of judges is the most democratic way of ensuring that judges remain accountable to the people. Proponents add that elections affirm the electoral beliefs of candidates who present themselves for judicial positions. These arguments rest on the reality that judges cannot be politically neutral in their personal capacities. Rather than conceal the political penchants of judicial candidates, it is better to have them known. Such political inclinations can only be known through campaigns that precede judicial elections.

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1374 Words | 6 Pages

A major evaluation of the Texas constitution is needed. The current layout of the Texas Constitution requires frequent changes and additions that only slow down the justice system and consequently, effecting the Texas Governor. If the Governor were to change such specifications in the Constitution, reducing the strict preciseness of it, it can expand each clause, increasing productivity in

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762 Words | 4 Pages

The Constitution of 1876 was toward the end in the development of a new, restructured and revised constitution in Texas, yet it was not the last attempt to revise the natural law of Texas. Pressure begin to build to change and streamline the Texas Constitution in the late 1960s. By 1969, fifty-six obsolete and out dated provisions were revoked, including a whole article. This called for a more fundamental overhaul and restructuring of the Constitution, which led to an extensive and prolonged process of constitutional revision that began in the 1970s. Efforts during this time were imperative for two reasons: it explained a long-standing concern whether the legislature had the constitutional right to convene as a constitutional convention; and secondly, the Texas Constitutional Revision Commission provided a thorough revision of the state constitution that served as the foundation for a new

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800 Words | 4 Pages

Ideally, being able to elect judges seems like a fair concept. Both parties present a field candidate and the voters decide which to choose; however, this system is flawed. Not only is it difficult for the people to obtain any real information about their candidates, there is also the issue of “…Texas justice being sold to the highest bidder.” As a result, many cases have been influenced because of these generous contributions to the candidates. Rather than electing judicial officials, Texas should adopt a system of having a governor, or the Senate, appoint its judges, then every few years, voters sustain the right to retain those judges if they so desire.

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807 Words | 4 Pages

In the state of Texas there are two courts of final appeal. The highest court for civil matters is the nine member Texas Supreme Court. The nine member Texas Court Criminal Appeals is for criminal matters. The number and variety of courts are confusing to the average citizen. The judges in these courts have only general qualifications who need not be lawyers and these judges are selected in a partisan election, which is a general election where the candidates are nominated by the political parties and their respective party labels appear on the ballot.

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764 Words | 4 Pages

In the Texas Constitution, the local government is subordinate to the state government. The Texas Constitution contains numerous statutory arrangements that indicate decisively what the government is permitted to do or not to do. At the point when open policy challenges emerge, Texas’ public officials do not have the choice of translating the constitution in a way that would enable them to veer off from the particular dialect of the

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738 Words | 3 Pages

The Supreme Court has to vote on their cases but there is no way for the public to know why they take the case there is a veil over the court. It has been suggested to the court to post a tally of what cases the court is selects the cases that the have chosen as well as the people should know what type of cases the justices have selected for reave. It has come to some individual attention that the people of the United State do not know what the courts have dissuaded on the cases the select, some justices may only vote to take cases that correlate with their agenda; cases that involve corporate Americas issues. This could lead to the people of this county, as well as others in

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1025 Words | 5 Pages

The political culture of Texas can be described as being both Individualistic as well as Traditionalistic. In other words, Texas believes in the basic feature of individualistic values such as a strong belief in self-reliance, resistance to regulation, and a suspicion of public institutions. However,

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1339 Words | 6 Pages

The main draw to merit selection is the commissions, which “minimize political influence by eliminating the need for candidates to raise funds, advertise, and make campaign promises, all of which can compromise judicial independence” (AJS, 2010, p. 1). Unfortunately, the commissions are the main drawback as well because many people think it is easily politically influenced. New York is a good example to analyze which one of these ideals is true since it changed from partisan election to merit selection in its highest courts, the court of appeals (Becker and Reddick, 2003, p. 25). Remember, merit selection most commonly uses retention elections to retain judges in office, but something unique about New York’s system is they do not use retention elections, which have been shown to be politically influenced like partisan elections (Reid, 1999, p. 68 and 69), subject to change with public opinion (Canes-Wrone, Clark, and Park, 2010, p. 229) , and have a low turnover rate (Carbon and Berkson, 1980, Abstract), like most states with merit selection of some kind. Retention elections have the main purpose of trying

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1306 Words | 6 Pages

Due to the increased prevalence of claims that corporations in the United States are buying and selling politicians through campaign donations, the Supreme Court has been forced to address campaign finance and campaign finance reform in the last several decades. Most people are aware of the highly controversial Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling of 2010. However, the Supreme Court has handed down other important decisions that impact campaign finance, whether at the state or federal level, including Buckley v. Valeo (1976), McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003), and several others. In most of these cases, the Supreme Court ascertained whether campaign spending and donations violated the Federal Election Campaign

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680 Words | 3 Pages

Although Texas government is democratic, the rich and educated make most of the decisions according to Texas politics, 6th Edition. Government-refers to the institutions in which decision are being made that resolve conflicts or allocate benefits and privileges. Institution refers to an ongoing organization that performs certain functions for society. Another report by the National Bureau of Census shows that Texas is in the top 10% of citizens below poverty line. With such wealth inequality in Texas, is no wonder minorities tend to be less involved.

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247 Words | 1 Pages

The article Broken Bench explains the controversy over having “tiny courts” in New York State. The author, William Glaberson argues that the idea of justice within the jurisdiction of these tiny courts is unfairly decided among the justices in charge. Due to the lack of experience of these justices, it is difficult for fair justice to be dealt out. One of the major causes explained by the author for unfair justice is that the justices of the court are very inexperienced. For example, William Glaberson states, “Nearly three-quarters of the judges are not lawyers, and many — truck drivers, sewer workers or laborers — have scant grasp of the most basic legal principles.

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1254 Words | 6 Pages

In this paper I will, Discuss the judicial selection process of my state, choose a second state, and describe the qualifications and the selection

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