Enough Trial Lawyer Whining

There has been increasing whining from trial lawyers about the impact of "interest group politics" on state supreme court elections. In particular, there is a lot of moaning about "conflicts of interests" coming from judges having to raise money to run for office. The real problem is that trial lawyers are the biggest special interest group of all--and they are annoyed that they don't have this branch of state government all to themselves anymore.

 

Trial lawyers have a vested interest in judges who will continually expand the role of courts and litigation in our society. The more disputes there are to resolve in court, the more business there is for lawyers. The trouble is that trial lawyers have controlled the election of state judges for decades by either controlling the process that vets judges for appointment or by providing most of the funding for judicial elections.

 

A good example is the hundreds of thousands of dollars plaintiffs lawyers are stuffing into the campaign coffers of Galveston District Judge Susan Criss, who is running for the Texas Supreme Court. The bulk of Criss' campaign contributions come from plaintiffs' lawyers who have business before her court, namely personal injury lawsuits against BP stemming from a 2005 refinery explosion. Draw your own conclusions.

 

The bottom line is that trial lawyers pick the judges, and they usually pick them from within their own ranks. It shouldn't be a shocker that we're experiencing a litigation explosion.

 

So some business leaders have decided to fight back and support candidates in state judicial elections. In effect, they are saying that the role of litigation in our society is not just a matter to be left up to the trial lawyers. The trial lawyers have risen up in self-righteous indignation at such effrontery. They are writing books, holding conferences, writing articles--all with the theme that we can't let "special interest money" into state judicial elections. State judicial elections have always been defined by special interest politics ... there is now just more than one special interest in the game!

 

If you want to get money out of the system, you would need to get all money out of the system (including trial lawyer money) and significantly involve non-lawyers in the judicial selection and appointment process.

 

I'm quite sure that trial lawyers wouldn't want either of those things. They just want to take the game back to the way it used to be played.