Texans for Public Justice
April 2001
By Craig McDonald
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In Texas, judges' campaign donors are more likely to get their day in court, according to a recent study by Texans for Public Justice. The Supreme Court is almost four times more likely to hear a donor's case than a non-contributor.
Texas is one of eight states where Supreme Court candidates run for office in partisan elections. The judges raise much of their money from lawyers and litigants who have business before these courts. Our report conclusively documents that Texas justices swing the courtroom doors open wider when their campaign contributors come knocking.
The legal establishment has danced around this legitimacy crisis with a Texas two step. It acknowledges that Texas' judicial-selection system is fatally flawed. "The way Texas elects partisan judges, and allows those who practice before them to supply the campaign money will always fuel suspicion that justice is for sale here," Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Phillips has said. At the same time, the legal establishment insists that this is a merely a problem of perception. Those who give and take the millions of campaign dollars say that this money has no influence on the official actions of Texas judges. But even a 1999 Supreme Court survey found that 48 percent of the state's judges say that campaign contributions have "a significant influence on the outcome of judicial decisions."
The contention that money does not influence judicial actions stumbles over an awkward coincidence. In the 1980s, plaintiff lawyers bankrolled Texas Supreme Court justices, and the court often ruled in favor of plaintiffs. Since the 1990s, the court's decisions have overwhelmingly favored corporate defendants and defense lawyers who are now the big contributors to the justices' campaigns. Our study goes a step further. Rather than looking at the outcome of cases, we examined the extent to which the justices accepted appeals filed by their top donors. Here, too, we found that campaign contributors enjoyed extraordinary access to the high court.
Every year, hundreds of litigants who are unsatisfied with the decisions by lower state courts file "petitions for review" that urge the Texas Supreme Court to intervene on their behalf. The justices accept a small fraction of these requests.
By accepting a petition, the court is not signaling how it intends to rule. The court is, however, granting the petitioner an opportunity to present his or her case in the Texas Supreme Court. The vast majority of petitioners never get this opportunity.
The more money that lawyers and litigants contribute to Texas Supreme Court justices, the more likely they are to have their day in the high court.
From 1994 to 1998, the 10 justices who faced an election raised a total of $12.8 million in campaign funds. They received 52 percent of this amount from litigants and lawyers who filed petitions with the court during this same period.
Justice Deborah Hankinson raised 60 percent of her war chest from petitioners, the most of any of justice. Justice Priscilla Owen, who depended least on petitioner contributions, received 43 percent of her money from them.
The justices were almost four times more likely to accept petitions filed by contributors than petitions filed by non-contributors. Of the petitions that the court accepted, 70 percent involved at least one party who had contributed to a judge.
The more someone contributes, the more likely it is that the court will hear their appeal. While the average overall petition-acceptance rate was 11 percent, this rate leapt to 56 percent for those who contributed more than $250,000. In contrast, non-contributors enjoyed an acceptance rate of just 5.5 percent.
This study demonstrates clearly that the more political money that lawyers and litigants contribute to the justices, the more likely they are to have their day in the high court. These findings do not link specific campaign contributions to the court's verdict. Rather, they reveal a general, institutionalized pattern in which the court's big donors enjoy vastly greater access to the court than those who do not contribute money.
The strong relationship between political contributions and access to the Texas Supreme Court mirrors patterns in our legislative and executive branches of government -- where money buys access to politicians even though it may not guarantee support for a given policy. The difference, however, is one of expectations. The American system of government promises an independent judiciary that will treat everyone alike, be they rich or poor, contributors or non-contributors. The relationship between campaign contributions and access to the Texas Supreme Court is evidence that Texas courts fall woefully short of this ideal.
The beneficiaries of the current system (those who give and receive judicial contributions) have long denied that campaign contributions influence the court's official actions. Yet the data plainly demonstrate a powerful relationship between campaign contributions and the likelihood that the court will agree to accept an appeal. Rather than continuing to ignore this shameful reality, Texas political leaders should institute fundamental reform to create a judiciary that is independent in both reality and appearance.