Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Green Roots, Smart Growth: Judicial Review

Green Roots, Smart Growth: Judicial Review
http://lyrazgov.blogspot.com/2007/07/judicial-branch-of-texas-government-is.html

My Comment:
I have to agree that the Texas Court System is incredibly complex. I had to read about each level of the justice system several times in our textbook and online before finally gaining a basic understanding of what each courts purpose was. Even after reading and re-reading several times, I found myself confused still during test 3 for our class when it asked questions about each court. I kept getting them all confused and mixing up each level. This problem, in a way, links back to the Texas Constitution being outdated and disorganized as we learned at the beginning of the class. Instead of taking the time to rewrite and correct our constiution we have simply tried to amend it and made the problem worse. Our state needs to simplify and update its government.

I have never really thought about judges being voted into office vs. appointed before this class. However, you make a good point that the justice system should separate itself from outside influence from interest groups in order to make fair decisions in court. I had never realized we were only one of few states that still vote judges in as opposed to appointing them. From now I'll be sure to pay more attention to the impact that has on our court system.

1 comment:

Kris S. Seago said...

Nice commentary. The Judicial Branch is SO very confusing. I think the only way to sort it out is to have proceedings at the various courts--but some of those aren't so pleasant.