U.S. News reported yesterday that the library at SMU is struggling to meet its fund-raising goals:
Don’t say that former President Bush hasn’t been hit by the crumbling economy he handed off to President Obama. Friends tell us that it has slowed the drive to raise some $500 million to build and endow the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Dallas’s Southern Methodist University. “It’s a bad environment,” says one. Bush is taking no chances: He’s making donor calls himself, and even his dad, the 41st president, is helping out, as are former aides like Karl Rove. In the future, say associates, look for Bush to host fundraising events in order to meet a goal of completing construction in 2013. But for now, “he’s laying low,” says one.
Jefferson’s speech to the Lege on Wednesday was widely reported. But the week brought other news that underscored the Chief’s plea to change Texas to a merit-based appointment system. First, there was the $2.6 million bribery scheme by two judges in Pennsylvania, one of the other seven states that still elects judges. Then today there is the NYTimes report that the U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing a major case in West Virginia, decided by a new chief justice whose election – echoing John Grisham’s recent best-seller, The Appeal — was mainly financed by a coal executive whose company was a litigant in the case.
Chief Justice Jefferson was forthright about the low opinion citizens hold about their state judges:
I share [former Supreme Court] Justice O’Connor’s concern about the corrosive influence of money in judicial elections. Polls asking about this perception find that more than 80% of those questioned believe contributions influence a judge’s decision. That’s an alarming figure – four out of five.
Alarming? More than that. It demonstrates how too much democracy can undermine the very norms that make democracy possible. The rule of law upheld by an unbiased judiciary is the sine qua non of a free society. State Senator Robert Duncan (R., Lubbock) has introduced a bill to eliminate elections of appellate judges. As this editorial from the San Angelo Standard Times argues, it doesn’t go far enough but it’s a good start.