By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
A series of political signs caught my eye recently while driving along Lucas Avenue just east of Allen in Collin County, Texas.
“Keep Your Republican Judges” the signs blurt out.
The signs bring to mind a question I used to ask Texas judicial candidates while I was working for a living as a newspaper editor.
“Can you tell me the difference,” I would ask, “between Democratic justice and Republican justice?” The answer from judges and judicial candidates in either party was essentially the same. They couldn’t differentiate between the parties.
That brings me to a point I have been harping on since The Flood, which is that if Texas is going to keep electing its judges it needs to remove the partisan label from these races.
I have more or less given up on the notion of appointing judges and then having them stand for “retention” at the ballot box. Texas seems wedded to the notion of electing judges, which we do at all manner of levels: justices of the peace, to county court at law judges, to district judges, to appellate court judges, to the Court of Criminal Appeals and to the Texas Supreme Court.
They all run either as Democrats or Republicans. Depending on the relative strength of either party at the time, we have tossed out fine judges from the weaker of the two parties.
As late as the early 1980s, when Democrats remained strong in Texas, fine GOP judges got the boot. Then the tide turned and Texans began tossing out fine Democratic judges in favor of GOP judges. Why? Because they were of the party in power.
It doesn’t make sense to me.
Judges who adjudicate criminal and civil cases do not deliver justice on the basis of partisan leaning. Appellate judges, be they sitting on regional appellate benches or on the state’s top two appellate courts — the CCA or the Supreme Court — do not interpret the Texas Constitution on a partisan level.
I can understand selecting judges based on their judicial philosophy. If they are too soft or too harsh in their judgments, then allow voters to make their selection on that basis.
Partisan labels don’t belong in our state’s judicial contests.