Legal News

Obama?s Coattails Stretch to Texas Trial Courts

By Nathan Koppel

If plaintiffs lawyers in Houston are a little groggy this morning from too much partying, please forgive them. They’ve got much to cheer about: Last night, Houston trial courts underwent a massive face lift, as 22 Democratic judges swept into office.

Harris County, where Houston is located, had been a Republican stronghold since 1994, resulting in a trial bench that was almost exclusively Republican and, according to critics, too favorably disposed towards corporate defendants in civil cases and prosecutors in criminal cases. A WSJ article over the weekend looked at the partisan battle underway in Harris County, with Democrats hoping Obama would be popular enough to carry Democratic judges into office.

He did his job; Democrats won 22 of the 26 district-court races in Harris County. In Dallas County, which also used to be a GOP bastion before a partisan shift in 2006, Democrats won all six district-court races.

Of course, we’re still left with the hot-button issue of whether partisan elections are a good way to select judges. Many lawyers and good-government types say partisan judicial elections can bias outcomes, with judges possibly inclined to favor big contributors. Spending on judicial races has climbed dramatically across the country. In Harris County, trial lawyers on the left and tort reformers on the right kicked in substantial sums to elect judges perceived as like-minded.

Even Houston lawyers, who wanted fresh blood on the bench, worried that a Democratic partisan sweep could oust some competent Republican judges. “I don’t know if we want to go in the direction of discouraging qualified people from seeking the bench, because they may be just swept out in 2, 4, or 6 years even though they have done an outstanding job,” said Houston plaintiffs lawyer Randall Sorrells.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on November 05, 2008 (boomark / email).