Independence of the Judiciary
Resources and Information

Richard Pena, Immediate Past President State Bar of Texas

" Our role, the role of all us as students, as lawyers, as professors…and generally as leaders in the community is to educate the public and educate them about judicial selection and the various alternatives. We have to educate them about the pros and cons about election vs. selection."

Alfred P. Carlton of Raleigh, N.C., chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Judicial Independence

"The protection of the independence of the judiciary has been one of the core purposes of the ABA since it founding 120 years ago. It is something that we take very seriously and that we try to respond to on a day to day and year to year basis."

Morris Harrell, member of the ABA standing committee and former ABA president

"We are here to work with you. We are here to inform you. Those who might like to hear it for the first time….about what’s going on and the hope for maybe being more efficient and adopting some systems and some procedures that will not take away the rights of the citizens. Not eliminate their participation, but make their participation more meaningful."

Jo Ann Merica, immediate past president of the Texas Young Lawyers Association

"Only 11 percent of the lawyers in this state favor the current method by which we select judges, and overwhelmingly lawyers across the board regardless of their background or their practices indicate that partisan elections are the most significant weakness in the Texas judicial and court system. For those reasons the State Bar of Texas and certainly the average Texas practitioner believes that this issue bares a good deal more scrutiny."

Judge Cara Lee Neville, Hennepin District judge in Minneapolis, member of the standing committee

"There is an individual judicial independence that I feel when I sit on the bench when I have to make a decision and I realize that I took an oath when I took the bench that says I will make my decisions without fear or favor of any man. So I have to make my decisions without looking over my shoulder…..I have to make some decisions that are not very popular. But I have to make hard decisions and I have to make them according to the law and the facts as they are standing in front of me."

Thomas Phillips, chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court

"I have great confidence in the voters to make the right decision if they have the right information - but that that does take money and where that money comes from is a tremendous perception problem as well as for the judges and the lawyers who are asked to give."

Former FBI Director William S. Sessions of San Antonio, who is also a former federal judge and immediate past chair of the committee

"I will predict now, here this morning, that we will not go another decade in Texas without having come around to actually providing for a better system and a better way that not only selects our judges and makes them accountable and deals with the horrible issue of finance for those campaigns."