Our Supreme Court
Look for candidates with experience and diversity for Texas’ top civil bench.
The Texas Supreme Court should be filled with nine of the best lawyers that Texas has to offer. Unfortunately, our partisan elections require that justices become party-oriented fundraisers. It takes about $1 million, if not more, to run a successful statewide campaign in Texas. That kind of money creates the appearance of impropriety on the court — if not actual conflicts of interest. It is a problem that deserves the attention of our Legislature.
Meanwhile, voters should look for candidates who are experienced in the high-level legal thinking that confronts our state’s civil court of last resort.
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 3: Debra Lehrmann
Justice Debra Lehrmann, 59, has spent six years serving on the Texas Supreme Court and before that she was a Tarrant County family court judge for 22 years. In that time she has acquired a reputation as a hardworking and respected jurist with a record of success dating back to her days at University of Texas School of Law.
Her Democratic opponent and former judge of the 214th District Court in Nueces County, Mike Westergren, says that there needs to be more balance on the all-Republican court. Lehrmann agrees but they differ as to the nature of the deficit. Westergren argues for more ideological balance, while Lehrmann maintains the justices need to continue to challenge each other.
A recent judicial studies graduate of Duke University School of Law, Lehrmann faced a primary challenger because of her dissenting opinions on an all-Republican panel. But those dissents are an important way to provoke dialogue on the court and spur the Legislature to clear up a statutory ambiguity. Lehrmann has also penned two legal treatises, which are used regularly by judges and attorneys as guides for understanding the law.
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 5: Dori Contreras Garza
What is Republican incumbent, Justice Paul Green, doing wrong on the Texas Supreme Court? According to his Democratic challenger, Justice Dori Garza, not much.
She told the editorial board that she’s not running against Green personally, but instead to provide greater diversity on the court.
The first in her family to receive a college degree, Garza, 58, attended night school at the University of Houston Law Center and in 2002 was elected to the 13th Court of Appeals, which stretches from Matagorda County south to the U.S.-Mexico border. She’s been re-elected twice and in 2010 was one of three candidates recommended by the Texas congressional delegation to serve as a federal judge in Corpus Christi.
If elected, she’ll bring different personal and ideological perspectives to a court that’s been critiqued as leaning in favor of corporations and state authority at the expense of everyday Texans.
That’s not to say the two-term incumbent is doing a bad job. A former justice on the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonio, Green has twice saved our state from unqualified political activists who tried to navigate the Republican Party primary as a path to the Texas Supreme Court. For those feats alone, Green has earned our thanks.
This is a friendly race, and both candidates praised the other as qualified for the position. Voters can’t go wrong.
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 9: Eva Guzman
It took 100 pages for the Texas Supreme Court to explain that our state’s school funding system was constitutional, if imperfect. But Justice Eva Guzman’s passionate concurrence should light a fire under Texas politicians who may think that winning at the Texas Supreme Court absolves them of any duty to improve our public schools.
Her passion for children was palpable in that opinion, and it reflects a career that began as a judge on the 309th Family District Court, where her docket was filled with foster children and broken families. Guzman, 55, went on to serve on the Houston-based 14th Court of Appeals, before being appointed by then Governor Rick Perry to this bench in 2009, where she was the first Latina woman to serve on the high court.
Guzman’s Democratic challenger, Savannah Robinson, has served as a trial lawyer for 34 years, but she cannot match Guzman’s years of experience at all levels of our state’s judicial system.