Face it. The government doesn’t trust you when it comes to the civil justice arena. Over the last few years, big business, insurance companies and Texas lawmakers decided the public couldn’t be trusted to make decisions when we serve on juries. So, the legislature passed tort "reform" legislation making it harder for cases to get to jury trials, and once there, limiting what juries could award.

But they’re not satisfied. A new legislative session starts this month and new legislation suggests they don’t even trust us to vote. For the last 130 years, Texas judges have been elected in partisan judicial elections. And while not perfect, the system has continued to work pretty well. Because of that, past efforts at reform have failed. But in this year’s elections, something different happened — many Republican judges lost their re-election campaigns in Dallas County, and other races around the state were closer than predicted. As a result, there is a real wave from big business and insurance companies to modify the system and allow judges to be appointed by the governor.

Voters should be appalled at the proposed changes. Not only are voters being told we’re not qualified to elect judges, but the proposal itself is simply hypocritical. For instance, the 2006 State Republican Party Platform contains the following:

Direct Election of State Judges --- We support our right to select our judges by a direct vote of the people and oppose all attempts to impose an appointment/retention process.

We all learned as kids that it’s not right to change the rules of the game simply because you didn’t get the result you want. And that goes both ways — in the 1990s, voters ushered out numerous Democratic judges in Harris and other counties as the politics of those counties changed. Neither party should push for change simply because the results are not to their liking.

Appointment of judges brings a whole new risk of problems. When the Texas constitution was adopted in 1876, the framers properly recognized that appointed judges would be beholden to an individual or small group — they wanted an independent judiciary, not one subject to the executive or legislative branches of the government. If a judge serves at the leisure of a governor, how likely is the judge to rule against the governor if the case should arise?

The one legitimate argument against partisan elections is that it injects partisan politics into the judiciary. But federal appointment of judges shows how politicized and nasty judicial appointments can get; appointment of judges just moves the politics from the voters to the appointers.

We hope you will pay attention this legislative session and let the governor and others know that we, the public, can and should be trusted to vote.