The Texas Tribune has a fascinating article on the recent primary in Texas on Super Tuesday, and who is threatening to sweep to judicial power:
In Democratic judicial primaries last Tuesday, Dayna beat David, Jane trounced Jim, and Colleen got more support than John, David and Brennen combined. Is that all there was to it?
Men have dominated Texas courts for decades. Now, in Democratic-controlled areas of the state, they seem headed for extinction.
The corrective for years of gender inequity on the bench has proven rather simple: voters.
Women have disappeared from the high-octane Democratic presidential primary. But in down-ballot, low-information races, Texas Democrats are increasingly, consistently backing women over men. In last week’s Democratic primary, women won more votes than men in all of the roughly 30 gender-split contests for high court, court of appeals and district court, according to results from the Texas Secretary of State. Rarely was it even close.
Thus signaling the continuing transition of society in Texas. If you’re outraged by the male power structure, then this may sound like a good thing. I, however, take a neutral position, because for me competence is more important than gender. Consider this bit:
In many races where women triumphed, both candidates were highly qualified. But panic has set in among attorneys and judges about some surprising female victors.
Austin attorney Madeleine Connor had run four times unsuccessfully and three times as a Republican before last week, when she triumphed in the Democratic primary for 353rd District Court in Travis County over 10-year incumbent Tim Sulak. Sulak had held events with U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett and Cecile Richards; Connor was on the state’s short blacklist of “vexatious litigants,” and in January, a federal judge ordered her to pay $43,000 in sanctions for a string of repetitive lawsuits filed against board members of her utility district.
Illustrating the dangers of ‘blind voting.’ Indeed, elective races for judges’ seats simply illuminates the dangers of the entire process of electing judges: either it turns on ideological issues which may not be compatible with current or future law, thus forcing the winner to either contradict the law or break their promises; or the voters use irrelevant criteria for casting their vote.
I remain firmly ensconced in the “appoint the judges” chair.
Of course, partisan politics can also swamp the judicial appointment process. Consider this report on the recusal of Chief Alaska Supreme Court Justice Bolger, on a trial concerning the legality of an attempt to recall Governor Mike Dunleavy (R) for allegedly ignoring the specified process for appointing judges, as noted by Alaska Public Radio:
Bolger heads the Alaska Judicial Council, which nominates judges for the governor to select from. In response to Dunleavy’s refusal to select from the list of names submitted by the council, Bolger issued a statement saying that Dunleavy’s office didn’t seem to understand the Alaska Constitution’s requirements around the appointment of judges, and added that “the governor must appoint one of the candidates nominated by the council.”
Another of the recall campaign’s grounds is that Dunleavy violated the state’s “separation of powers” doctrine by using his line-item veto to cut the judiciary’s budget, in response to a decision by the Alaska Supreme Court that upheld protections for abortion. Months later, Bolger gave a speech at the Alaska Federation of Natives’ annual convention where he asked participants to push back against “political influence” of the courts.
Presumably, none of the prospective nominees were sufficiently anti-abortion for this Republican governor, and his retaliation was quite stinging.
The point is that I’m not pushing a panacea; we can screw this up as an appointment as well. In the end, though, I think an appointment process has a better chance of producing independent judges devoted to interpreting the law – rather than who-knows-what sort of candidates that the electorate knows so very little about. While I don’t know the specifics of the Alaskan mess, it’s safe to say someone decided to play politics rather than governance.
