[ Report Home | Previous Page | Next Page ] Pay to Play I. Summary

• The 10 Texas Supreme Court Justices who faced an election from 1994 through 1998 raised $12.8 million for those political campaigns.

 
• These justices raised 52 percent of this money ($6.7 million) from lawyers, law firms  and litigants who filed appeals with the high court during this same period.

 
• The justices rejected 89 percent of the 3,942 appeals that they received, agreeing to review just 11 percent of them.

 
• The justices were four times more likely to accept an appeal filed by a campaign contributor than they were to accept an appeal filed by a non-contributor.

 
• The more money that a petitioner contributed to the justices the more likely that they were to accept a given petition:
• The justices were 7.5 times more likely to accept petitions filed by contributors of at least $100,000 than petitions filed by non-contributors; and
• The justices were 10 times more likely to accept petitions filed by contributors of more than $250,000 than petitions filed by non-contributors.

 
• Court contributors, who accounted for 40 percent of all petitions filed, accounted for 70 percent of all the petitions that the court accepted.

 
• The court was more receptive to petitions filed by Chief Justice Tom Phillips’ old firm than any other major appellate firm. Baker Botts—one of just two firms that contributed more than $250,000 to the justices—enjoyed an astonishing petition-acceptance rate of 74 percent.