#1! All others are #2 or lower!

by Ted on May 21, 2005

The Houston Bar Association has just published its judicial evaluation poll.

The poll, which is completed every two years, asked HBA members to rate judges “outstanding,” “acceptable” or “poor” in seven categories, including following the law, demonstrating impartiality, paying attention in court and using attorneys’ time efficiently. It also assigned them an overall rating. The poll included federal, state, county and municipal judges.

About 1,200 lawyers, 11 percent of the association’s membership, responded to the poll. Most judges were not rated by every attorney participating in the poll because lawyers were asked only to consider judges they have worked with directly.

You’ll never guess who was judged to be the worst Supreme Court Justice in Texas. Go on, try. (In her defense, the poll apparently asked nothing about Sunday School teaching.)

{ 28 comments }

1

Brett Bellmore 05.21.05 at 6:18 pm

I suspect you’re aware of what self-selected polls are worth…

2

John 05.21.05 at 6:23 pm

Hey, Brett, if that resolves the cognitive dissonance…

3

y81 05.21.05 at 6:51 pm

Aren’t these sort of polls mostly filled out by personal injury lawyers (or “scum,” as we real lawyers call them)? And don’t the results mostly reflect whether the judge is pro-plaintiff? I mean, not to be rude, but wouldn’t reading Ann Althouse or something be more reliable?

4

semi-anonymous 05.21.05 at 7:06 pm

Sounds like Brian Leiter’s methodology…

5

Brett Bellmore 05.21.05 at 7:09 pm

No cognitive dissonance to resolve, since I don’t think judges are best judged on how popular they are with lawyers. That’s not who they’re working for, ultimately…

Notice, though, that Ms. Owen’s rating, like that of several of the other judges, is decidely bimodal; With 39.5% thinking her “outstanding”, 15.2% “acceptable, and 45.3% “poor”. You either love her or hate her. Hm, maybe because you’re either a Republican or a Democrat?

6

am 05.21.05 at 7:16 pm

“11 percent of the association’s membership, responded to the poll”

I thought it was the Religious Right which was supposed to be anti-scientific?

7

Brett Bellmore 05.21.05 at 7:18 pm

Or, I suppose, you’re either a plaintif’s or defendant’s attorney… LOL

8

pedro 05.21.05 at 7:44 pm

“I thought it was the Religious Right which was supposed to be anti-scientific?”

Well, that’s exactly it. Not only is Judge Owen obviously divisive (as is evident from the story Ted has linked to), on top of that she’s a member of the Religious Right. Who wants an anti-science judge promoted? Oh, I forget: Bret Bellmore.

9

Brian Leiter 05.21.05 at 7:58 pm

This simply confirms what Republican appellate attorneys here in Texas have told me. She is a mediocrity, in addition to her unappealing moral and political views. The giveaway here is that there are several current and recent Republican Texas Supreme Court Justices who are actually rather accomplished jurists–former Chief Justice Tom Phillips, current Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson–yet the Bush people came up with the lightweight Owens. The reasons are obvious.

10

Brett Bellmore 05.21.05 at 8:31 pm

I’m actually fairly indifferent to whether she wins confirmation. (As opposed to whether she gets voted on.) And I find the present administration’s science policies to be pretty bad. (As a transhumanist, you can imagine my opinion of Leon Kass!) On the other hand, the Democratic party’s inability to understand that losing elections means that the other guys get to run the government is getting rather tiresome.

11

Lisa Williams 05.21.05 at 9:52 pm

49% of the vote went to people other than George Bush. I think Republicans’ insistence that my representative, Ted Kennedy, just roll over and stop doing his job of representing me — quite tiresome.

12

Rex 05.21.05 at 10:00 pm

Maybe you should put some shorts on or something, if you want to keep fighting evil today.

13

Brett Bellmore 05.21.05 at 10:16 pm

Yeah, and in ’92, 57% of the vote went to people other than Clinton. What’s your point?

14

nick 05.21.05 at 11:20 pm

With 39.5% thinking her “outstanding”, 15.2% “acceptable, and 45.3% “poor”. You either love her or hate her. Hm, maybe because you’re either a Republican or a Democrat?

Hm, because those numbers are absolutely in line with the political demographics of Houston? Er, no. Houston’s lawyers would have to be pretty damn atypical among Houston residents to skew that way.

On the other hand, the Democratic party’s inability to understand that losing elections means that the other guys get to run the government is getting rather tiresome.

So I suppose you wouldn’t care too much if the Democrats used the same attitude towards rules to declare, say, the Second Amendment null and void? Pish.

15

abb1 05.22.05 at 4:21 am

As Chris Floyd puts it:

The U.S. Congress gave away its powers long ago to corporate interests and the almighty executive branch that every legislator secretly hopes to lead one day, Pentagon thunderbolts in hand. (Who would curb Caesar that might Caesar be?) This “degradation of the democratic dogma” has been the work of more than 50 years of bipartisan goonery, but it has now reached its nadir in the festering pit of blood and bile that is the Bush Regime.

American public life is now almost entirely a facade, a deadening — and deadly — sideshow: the multibillion-dollar electoral circuses, the increasingly frenzied “culture wars,” the epic clash of interest groups across the media battlefields, the endless making, unmaking and remaking of laws. All this sound and fury merely obscures the ugly reality: that there are no effective restraints on the arbitrary exercise of power by the imperial court of President George W. Bush.

16

agm 05.22.05 at 5:05 am

Ted, lawyers in H-town would never disapprove of a Bush nominee, would they? =)

17

Brett Bellmore 05.22.05 at 5:26 am

“So I suppose you wouldn’t care too much if the Democrats used the same attitude towards rules to declare, say, the Second Amendment null and void? Pish.”

They do, Nick, they do, and far worse. Which is what makes the outrage so laughable. The idea that the Democrats making these arguments really have some kind of disinterested concern that procedures be respected is absurd on it’s face.

18

Ted 05.22.05 at 10:28 am

Brett —

If they didn’t have concern for these procedures, why did they follow them all those years when they were in the majority in Congress and it looked like the good times would never end? Why did they put up with blue slips, rule 4, and the other “obstructionist” techniques the Republicans used?

19

Thomas 05.22.05 at 10:31 am

I’m a bit confused by Brian Leiter’s post. Am I reading it right–did Republican appellate lawyers in Texas really describe Owens’ “moral and political views” as “unappealing”? I can’t tell whether Brian means to ascribe the views expressed in his second sentence to the lawyers he referred to in the first.

And, why on earth would the Bush administration choose a mediocrity with ‘unappealing moral and political views’, when a more accomplished jurist with similar moral and political views would be, according to Leiter, available? I confess that I don’t find the reasons obvious. I would think that a mediocrity would be perfectly acceptable at the district court level, where, from the perspective of an ideologically motivated administration, presumably one’s predictability would matter more than one’s lack of accomplishment. To a certain extent, the same is true at the Supreme Court–the administration presumably would be more concerned with how the nominee would vote than how persuasive the opinion would be, and, besides, with all those talented clerks it is very difficult to reveal one’s lack of accomplishment. But that’s certainly not obviously the case with nominees to the circuit court of appeals. The administration would presumably want those nominees to be accomplished, both to persuade the other judges on the circuit and to protect rulings from being overturned on further appeal. Maybe Brian could explain to us a bit more about what he’s thinking.

20

Scott Lemieux 05.22.05 at 10:56 am

“On the other hand, the Democratic party’s inability to understand that losing elections means that the other guys get to run the government is getting rather tiresome.”

Wow, I had no idea that the constitutional system put in place by the framers, with its many counter-majoritarian checks, had been replaced by Parliamentary goverment. Could you please cite the relevant constitutional amdendments? This is a major scoop you’ve got here!

21

Charles Kuffner 05.22.05 at 1:01 pm

Something that needs to be pointed out here is that with the exception of a few JPs (way at the bottom of the full list), every single judge rated in this poll is a Republican. You’ll note that the vast majority of them are rated pretty highly, including several of Justice Owen’s colleagues. If this were a straight partisan poll don’t you think she’d have more company in her mediocrity? Maybe, just maybe, this is a reasonably fair and accurate assessment of her abilities relative to other judges’.

22

goyen1 05.22.05 at 1:11 pm

Kinda funny that almost ALL elected judges in Houston area are Republican, yet so many Republican judges rate higher than this one. Must be a bias against Republican judges, right?

23

nick 05.22.05 at 2:48 pm

It’s curious to see Brett embrace ‘might makes right’ arguments, as it confirms my suspicion that there’s a core to that kind of libertarianism that’s no more sophisticated than ‘might makes right’. Power manifested down the barrel of a gun. Abhorrent, of course. But latent most of the time.

24

Joe Welsh 05.22.05 at 4:28 pm

Three observations:

1) Since she serves the state, I would be interested in what the Texas Bar Association surveys show.

2) The poll reflects a majority of participants find her outstanding or acceptable.

3) The bar is usually split on judges depending on whether you represent plaintiffs or defendants. The defense bar, although composed of large firms, is usually outnumbered by the number of plaintiff attorneys. Reflecting on observation number two makes it clear that she is attracting numbers from the plaintiffs bar.

25

Barry 05.22.05 at 7:00 pm

“Yeah, and in ‘92, 57% of the vote went to people other than Clinton. What’s your point?”
Posted by Brett Bellmore ·

The point is, Brett, that the GOP’s reaction wasn’t ‘They won, so they get to run the government’, it was “f*ck you!”. And they were off to use every dirty trick they could come up with to win.

26

ogmb 05.22.05 at 11:38 pm

On an almost completely unrelated note I just went to Keith Poole’s webpage and downloaded the W-Nominate scores for the 108th Senate, and our Preznit received a first dimension (Lib-Con) score of +0.998. The only senator more conservative than GWB was Wyoming’s Craig Thomas at +0.999.

Otoh, Kerry was more liberal than Ted Kennedy at -0.954 vs. -0.913.

27

Lisa Williams 05.23.05 at 11:22 am

Right on, Barry. Representatives should “represent,” sometimes in the hip-hop definition of that phrase. Right now, I don’t want to hear anything from my representatives except, “Stand up, Sit Down, Fight, Fight, Fight.”

The minute I hear any compromise weasel-words out of my reps is the minute I call them on the phone and give them an earful they won’t forget.

28

Brian McDaniel 05.23.05 at 7:37 pm

Brian Leiter writes:

“The giveaway here is that there are several current and recent Republican Texas Supreme Court Justices who are actually rather accomplished jurists—former Chief Justice Tom Phillips, current Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson—yet the Bush people came up with the lightweight Owens. The reasons are obvious.”

Is it because she is a woman? and thus more acceptable to a “identity politics” driven process?

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