Partisan judicial elections have been the subject of much hand-wringing in Texas, but not much action. As in many legislative sessions, several bills that would require some action have been filed this session. Two of them propose vastly different approaches to the issue.
HB 2772 proposes the creation of an interim committee to study the issue. The committee would be composed of both Senators and House members. The committee's mandate would be to study the "fairness, effectiveness, and desirability" of our current system of partisan elections and compare that to alternative judicial selection methods, including lifetime appointment, appointment for a term, appointment followed by contested election, and appointment followed by retention election. The committee's report would be due just before the 2015 Legislative session. HB 2772 has been considered in committee and reported favorably to the House. Click here to access information about the bill.
While a committee study is a stereotypical legislative approach, it would be more progress on the issue than has been seen in recent Legislative sessions. HB 2772 appears to reflect a recognition that there are issues to address. It may not lead to any changes, but it is a step in the right direction.
On the other side of the spectrum, HB 129 proposes to address the impact of campaign contributions. The bill would require all justices of the Supreme Court and judges of the Court of Criminal Appeals to recuse themselves if a party, an attorney, a law firm, a "managing agent" of a party, a member of a board of directors of a party, or a political action committee created by a party made a contribution of $2,500 or more to the justice or judge in the preceding four years. Interestingly, the bill would allow the opposing party to waive the recusal requirement. This bill has been referred to the Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee and has not yet been considered by the committee. Click here for information on HB 129.
The obvious impact of this bill would be to immediately limit law firm and attorney contributions to Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals races. It would also probably cause other contributors to rethink their approach to donations. No one with a possibility of having a case in either court would likely exceed the $2,500 contribution limit. But I'm not sure that simply trying to starve these state-wide races of funding will address the issues with partisan judicial elections. Nor does this bill address partisan elections of intermediate appellate judges or trial-level judges. It will be interesting to see whether this bill goes anywhere.
I'd love to hear your reaction to these two bills in the comments.
-- Rich Phillips, Thompson & Knight
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