Analysis: The Texas Supreme Court and the ruling class
But Abraham had the research capability to analyze his loss, to figure out why he lost a lawsuit he thought he had a very good chance of winning.
His conclusion was that big companies like BP, represented by top lawyers from firms based in tall downtown buildings in major cities, have a much-better-than-average chance of prevailing in the state’s highest civil court.
And he spices up that exploration by noting the correlations between contributions to the nine elected judges on that court and the success rates of nine particular law firms. His conclusion, as related by Platoff: “If you’re a billion-dollar company represented by one of nine elite law firms, you are 5.4 times more likely to win some or all of what you seek from the justices.”
He’s not saying this works like a specialized vending machine, where you put money in and get the ruling of your choice in return. In fact, he’s really measuring the size of his own miscalculation: He expected a particular result and thought he had the odds figured out when, in fact, the odds were against him the whole time.
He probably discovered some things already known to the people on and around the Texas Supreme Court. Justices there have complained for years — for decades — that putting judges on partisan ballots taints their reputations. First, it requires them to make sometimes uncomfortable alliances with whatever political parties they’ve joined. Worse, it has them taking contributions from the people most interested in what happens in the courtrooms of Texas — lawyers and the people and companies they represent.
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/02/26/texas-supreme-court-and-ruling-class/
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