Should Texas stop electing its judges?

A Harris County judge’s viral courtroom meltdown is raising a question reformers have pushed for years.

When video of Republican Harris County civil court Judge Nathan Milliron began circulating online last week, the reaction was swift. Viewers watched as Milliron, frustrated by a tech issue he couldn’t solve, relies on an IT guy, who fixes it with a few simple clicks. 

“False alarm,” the IT worker says, attempting, it appears, to relieve the growing tension.

“No, it wasn’t a false alarm!” Milliron barks back, before demanding “Get out of my courtroom!” 

“Find his supervisor,” Milliron then says to no one in particular. “Jesus Christ! I’m sick and tired of this bullshit today.”

The condemnation that followed was robust, with outlets as far flung as the New York Post calling Milliron a “jerk judge.” 

Believe it or not, it’s only been downhill from there for Milliron. 

In the days since the video has caught the public’s attention, he has clashed with a lawyer who offered reasonable critiques of his behavior from the bench, ordering him to appear in his court for a “show cause hearing”; drawn the ire of the president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association; had past unflattering emails exposed; and had another video showcasing his quick temper go viral. TMZ even dredged up a former bankruptcy in the “rude” judge’s near past.

One attorney, who once faced Milliron in a class action suit, told KPRC 2 he found the then-lawyer so utterly incompetent he “would not hire [him] to mow my lawn.” 

That may be the case. But voters in Harris county did hire Nathan Milliron via the ballot box. He now occupies the bench in the 215th District Court, a seat he won by a measly 300 votes in 2024. 

The recent scrutiny of his behavior got us at Courier Texas thinking: why does Texas elect judges at every level of the court system, from local justices of the peace all the way up to the state Supreme Court?

Judge Nathan Milliron. Photo via Facebook.

Texas is one of only six states that elect judges for each level of court. Many states use some form of appointment, merit selection or some hybrid of both. The latter, known as The Missouri Plan, is used in various forms across roughly 20 states, and works like this: when a vacancy opens, a nonpartisan commission of lawyers and citizens nominates candidates based on their qualifications. The governor appoints from that list. Then, after a set period, the judge faces a retention election—not against an opponent, but a simple yes or no from voters. Keep the judge, or don’t.

It’s designed to prioritize legal competence on the front end while preserving some public accountability on the back end. Texas reformers have raised the idea before, though it has never gained significant traction in the legislature.

“People think if judges are appointed, they would never be able to be removed,” said Allison Mathis, a Harris County-based criminal defense attorney. “They think it would be like the federal system where judges are appointed for life. That’s not true.”

There are all kinds of different systems in other states that basically would allow for a judge to be appointed, Mathis contends, and it wouldn’t all have to be done by the hand of a governor.

“This could be a neutral third party body of lawyers, former judges, legal experts and even community members,” she said. “All of whom have a stake in who the judges are in the community, and are able to educate themselves.”

Since the Milliron clips have caught fire, Mathis has gone viral herself in reels where she makes the case that Texas should not elect its judges, knocking down the arguments for keeping the system as it is. 

A big one is local representation. Texas is vast and varied. An elected judge in Harris County answers to Harris County. A judge appointed by a governor or selected by a committee in Austin may not reflect the values or priorities of the community where they actually serve.

The premise assumes partisan judicial elections actually produce judges who reflect their local communities. But in practice, Texas’ system produces judges who reflect whichever party swept the county that cycle. 

When a straight-ticket wave rolls through (as is often the case), it doesn’t necessarily install judges who embody the community’s values so much as it installs whoever happened to file under the right party label—sometimes candidates with little experience, and no particular connection to the community. The ballot position, not the person, does the representing.

Another argument for keeping the system as it is: Elected judges are accountable. 

To that, as Mathis points out in one of her Instagram posts, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct (SCJC) in Texas typically receives between 1,200 and 1,800 complaints against state judges annually, yet there hasn’t been a judge removed from the bench for misconduct in Texas since 1976. “Usually there’s very little action taken,” said Mathis. “It’s super secret probation or a slap on the wrist” where education or training is doled out. 

There’s also the idea that appointment systems can favor political insiders, reward connections over qualifications, and produce judges who are answerable to no one once they reach the bench.

But judicial elections have their own problems, and can also produce judges who may not be answerable to voters.

Critics of judicial elections, like Mathis, point to a core tension: judges are supposed to be impartial, but campaigns are inherently political. When judges have to raise money, build name recognition, and court voters, it introduces pressures that have nothing to do with the law. 

In Texas, judicial campaigns can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars—money that often comes from lawyers and law firms who will eventually appear before the judges they helped elect. That’s not a hypothetical conflict of interest. It’s baked into the structure.

Then there’s the ballot problem. Most judicial races sit deep down on a long ticket. Voters who show up for a presidential or gubernatorial race are unlikely to have researched every judge on the ballot. Name recognition, party affiliation, and top-of-ticket momentum often determine outcomes more than any assessment of legal skill or judicial temperament. Milliron’s paltry margin reflects just how little most voters engage with these races.

“I think there’s plenty of room for discussion about how to develop a more fair system, but this completely random, uneducated, massive ballot that Harris County has now—you get to the bottom of the bottom of the primary ballot, and you’re just like, ‘Who are these people?’” said Mathis. “I’m a lawyer in the courtrooms every day. But I don’t know who the civil court judges are. I don’t know who the family court judges are, right? Ask anybody, even very well informed voters, ‘OK, which judges are you holding accountable this cycle?’ They couldn’t tell you. We know that’s not happening.”