According to the Dallas Morning News, when the Texas Supreme Court considered 60-year-old James Steven Brite's age discrimination lawsuit against his ex-employer, insurance giant USAA, the courtroom wasn't just full of lawyers. It was also filled with political money.
The interests aligned against Brite, from USAA to some of the state's most powerful business groups, had given more than $1 million to the court's nine justices since 2000 for their partisan campaigns.
Brite – whose small-shop lawyers had donated a mere $14,000 to the justices since 2000 – lost his case in 2007 when the state's highest court overturned two lower-court decisions in his favor.
In hundreds of such cases involving big campaign donors, the same question arises: Is justice for sale? As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments on that question Tuesday in a West Virginia case, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson maintains that money doesn't rule Texas courts.
He acknowledges, however, that the public doesn't believe it.
"If you poll the public, they have this idea that a judge is going to be more inclined to render a judgment for a contributor than for a noncontributor," Jefferson said in an interview. "Every poll that's been taken on that bears out that public perception."
So Jefferson has joined Texas jurists going back 50 years by calling for a switch to merit selection of judges. Although 39 states have some form of judicial elections, Texas is among just nine that elect judges by political party.
