Maybe you were among the thousands who had a divorce or adoption, a criminal case, business dispute or personal injury suit pending when election time rolled around in 2010, or 2008 or 2006.
Maybe the judge on your case got ousted simply because his or her party affiliation didn't match the one that voters were sweeping in that year.In 2006, 42 Republican judges in Dallas County were replaced with Democrats, largely because the political pendulum swung.In 2008, Democrats knocked out 22 Republicans in Harris County, riding Barack Obama's presidential momentum.In 2010, the Democrats in contested Harris County district court races all lost.The problem is not that one party supplanted another but that many of the 1.7 million cases pending in Texas courts were disrupted: New judges had to restudy files, hearings and rulings were delayed, costing individuals in time and legal fees and taxpayers in dollars spent on the courts.In one special case involving asbestos litigation, the parties petitioned for -- and kept -- the Houston judge who was hearing pretrial motions but got defeated for re-election in 2008. That's because state Judge Mark Davidson had been appointed by the state's five-judge Multidistrict Litigation Panel to oversee a sprawling asbestos case in addition to his duties in Harris County's 11th District Court.He'd spent four years managing the litigation and developing expertise in the issues, and the parties didn't want to start over. The judge who won that election sits in 11th District Court, while Davidson continues as the asbestos pretrial judge.But other litigants don't have that option when elections upend the courthouse, even when the turmoil resulted from voters arbitrarily choosing judges by their Rs and Ds.Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson has a solution: eliminate straight-ticket voting for judges.Voting according to party "gives only an illusion of accountability," he wrote in The Advocate, a report by the State Bar of Texas litigation section. "The judge's political affiliation bears no relationship to wisdom, experience or overall competence."In his recent State of the Judiciary address, Jefferson again called for a constitutional amendment to allow merit selection of judges, which would free judicial selection of blind partisan voting, the imperative of judges raising campaign funds and the mistrust caused by judges being seen as politicians.But he said small steps would help, too, including abolishing straight-ticket balloting for judicial races, plus extending judges' terms to six years for district courts (they're now four) and eight years for appeals courts (now six).Longer terms seems relatively innocuous. But ending straight-ticket voting wouldn't solve the problem that occurs mainly in major metro areas: too many judicial races for voters to make well-informed decisions about all of them.In The Advocate, Jefferson supported a system in which a citizens commission reviews judicial applicants and makes recommendations for the governor to appoint; after serving a few years, judges are evaluated by a commission that issues a public performance report and run in retention elections.Accountability and informed voter participation are enhanced, the detrimental impact of money and partisan politics diminished.Too bad the Legislature seems farther than ever from improving judicial selection.But inattention doesn't diminish the need.Judicial sweeps every couple of years are almost as detrimental to the justice system as the blotch of judges taking campaign donations from lawyers and parties who appear before them.Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
