Texas Scorecard by Michael Quinn Sullivan January 20, 2020
Judges should have the courage to be accountable to the voters, and risk being removed from office should they let their personal biases be put ahead of the citizens.The Texas Constitution guarantees Texans the right to select their judges at the ballot box. In recent years, it has become fashionable in crony-elitist circles to denigrate Texas’ method of judicial selection. After all, you can’t trust mere citizens with the courts, right?
During the 2019 legislative session, the House and Senate voted for—and the governor signed—legislation creating a commission to study Texas’ judicial selection process. Only 11 members of the House and six members of the Senate opposed the legislation.
The commission is comprised of several House and Senate members, as well as individuals appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor, and House speaker.
At the commission’s first meeting two weeks ago, several appointed members let it slip that they wanted to remove the “party label†from judges. That’s been put forward in the past as the first step to taking judicial slots off the ballot altogether. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick quickly—and correctly—rejected that notion. After all, the Republican Party of Texas’ platform explicitly calls for protecting the right of citizens to elect judges.
Those who want to end judicial elections say judges should be “independent†of the electorate. But why? The citizens are sovereign in our republic, not the judiciary. Yes, the judiciary should be independent of the executive and legislative branches, but all three branches should be subservient to the law and the citizenry.
More:
https://texasscorecard.com/commentary/commentary-the-fight-to-keep-judicial-elections-in-texas/
