Texas Tribune looks at this issue: Can you be both a good politicians and a good judge? Are the qualities that make you the former, make it difficult to be the latter? Specifically, will the fact that members of the Texas Supreme Court are elected to office impact their decision on school finance in the state?
Here comes a little test. Earlier this year, a state district judge in Austin ruled that the state’s financing of public schools was unconstitutionally inequitable and inadequate, and illegally creates a de facto statewide property tax. That ruling is widely expected to be appealed to the Texas Supreme Court and then, based on the court’s decision, to the state Legislature for a remedy.
The political timing is sensitive. Three of the nine justices — Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson and Justices Phil Johnson and Jeffrey Boyd — will be up for election in 2014 (assuming each decides to run). Six of the nine were initially appointed to the court by Gov. Rick Perry, whose administration lost the case in district court.
The judges are supposed to ignore all of that. Are they aware of it? Maybe, according to Dale Wainwright, who resigned from the Texas Supreme Court last year and now practices law in Austin. But you have to be a judge and hope the politics work out.
“Maybe we’d know an issue was getting a lot of attention,” Wainwright said when asked if judges are aware of the politics surrounding a case. “It might be that we’d know that by the number of people in the courtroom. When you have that kind of a turnout, you know there’s some interest.”
However, he added, “Our training is to separate politics from the law.”
