Statistics show that incumbent judges across Texas enjoy an advantage when they run for reelection. Nearly 70% of the incumbent judges running for reelection this year sailed to another term with absolutely no contest in their primaries or the general election. This year in Texas, 145 of 341 total judicial candidates, or 43%, had no opponent …
Tag: politics
Bribery, Coercion, Abuse: Look Inside the Allegations Against Ken Paxton
The whistleblowers who have accused Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of crimes in office have raised serious allegations, but any prosecution based on their complaint is likely to face an uphill battle, according to criminal law experts. Pages and pages of details of the criminal allegations became public last week when four of the seven …
‘Political Theater’: Ethics Experts Expect Cruz, Hawley Disbarment Petitions to Fall Flat
Experts say it’s unlikely that a petition seeking disbarment of Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, for allegedly lying about election fraud and inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection would spur bar prosecutors to launch discipline cases. But one of the seven Yale Law School students who organized the petition, which has garnered nearly 11,000 signatures in …
Judicial election coverage in 2020
I created a system using Google Forms to email out an online questionnaire to all of the candidates who were running in contested races in the Texas primary in March, primary runoffs in July and in November’s general election. Texas Lawyer published hundreds of Q&A articles with the candidates, organized them into voter guides, and …
How the Justice System Severely Failed One of its Own
Part of the horror of what happened to Suzanne Wooten is the realization that if the justice system failed so miserably for her, it could happen to anyone. Wooten lived a nightmare: Winning an election by a landslide to unseat an incumbent judge, only to be allegedly targeted by political rivals, wrongfully convicted of nine …
‘Dreamer’ Law Students in Turmoil over DACA Uncertainty
Heartbroken. Disappointed. Stunned. Law students who took a shot at becoming lawyers with the help of an Obama-era immigration program say that’s how they feel after the news that President Donald Trump could rescind the program. Among the estimated 800,000 undocumented immigrants who are recipients of Deferred Action for Children Arrivals, or DACA, are law …