The Texas Supreme Court issued three opinions with this week's orders. I suspect we won't seen any more orders until 2008.
12/31 Update: The Court issued an exceptionally short set of orders on the 28th, denying a mandamus petition and carrying all pending matters over to the next term.
I'm quite behind on posting, especially with respect to recent Texas Supreme Court goings-on. That's to be expected this time of year, I suppose, but some personal issues have pulled me away even more than usual. I plan to pick up the pace and perhaps refocus things a bit as we head into 2008.
Anyway, this post at the Perlmutter & Schuelke Blog reminded me that Austin has been named as the #1 blogging city for lawyers (ahead of Seattle, thank you very much Kevin O'Keefe, whose report on this story I saw first). While I'm not one to question Austin's greatness in all things technological, Brooks Schuelke rightly asks where all of the Austin law bloggers are. Maybe the survey criteria were geared to law blog readers rather than writers.
The Texas Supreme Court issued several opinions with today's orders. I will post noteworthy details when time permits.
As reported in the Tex Parte Blog, the race for chief justice of the Austin Court of Appeals is shaping up. The incumbent, Chief Justice Kenneth Law (R) (pictured) recently announced his plans to seek re-election, following some speculation that he would not run again. Former Justice Woodie Jones (D) previously announced his candidacy and is gearing up for a strong bid.
Travis County remains a Democratic stronghold, but a number of the 24 counties in the Third District are primarily Republican. This race won't match the drama of the last election cycle, but it should be interesting nonetheless.
The Texas Supreme Court issued two decisions with this week's orders:
In Igal v. Brightstar Information Technology Group, (No. 04-0931), the Court held that the Texas Workforce Commission's final adjudication denying recovery of wages under the Texas Payday Law's administrative procedure bars a subsequent common-law claim for the same wages in state court. Justice Brister (joined by Chief Justice Jefferson and Justices O'Neill and Medina) dissented.
In Morales v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. (No. 05-0754), the Court concluded that a proceeding before a Texas Workers' Compensation Commission appeals panel involved whether a worker's widow had suffered a "compensable" injury that entitled her to pursue workers' comp benefits and bring suit in her home county. The Court reversed the court of appeals' judgment, which affirmed the trial court's judgment of dismissal, and remanded to the trial court for further proceedings.
Judicial elections in the United States have undergone a dramatic transformation. For more than a century, these state and local elections were relatively dignified, low-key affairs. Campaigning was minimal; incumbents almost always won; few people voted or cared. Over the past quarter century and especially the past decade, however, a rise in campaign spending, interest group involvement, and political speech has disturbed the traditional paradigm. In the new era, as commentators have dubbed it, judicial races routinely feature intense competition, broad public participation, and high salience.
This Article takes the new era as an opportunity to advance our understanding of elective versus nonelective judiciaries. In revisiting this classic debate, the Article aims to make three main contributions. First, it offers an analytic taxonomy of the arguments for and against electing judges that seeks to distinguish the central normative concerns from the more contingent, empirical ones. Second, applying this taxonomy, the Article shows how both the costs and the benefits of elective judiciaries have been enhanced by recent developments, leaving the two sides of the debate further apart than ever.
Third, the Article explores several deep ironies that emerge from this cleavage. Underlying these ironies is a common insight: As judicial elections achieve greater legitimacy as elections, it will tend to undermine the judiciary's distinctive role and our broader democratic processes. There is an underappreciated tradeoff between the health of judicial elections and the health of the judiciary, the Article posits, that can help recast the controversy over the new era.Sounds like something members of the Legislature ought to read before taking up judicial election reform again in 2009.
Roger Hughes tipped me off to this opinion from the Thirteenth Court of Appeals, which borrows a Spanish expression I had the privilege of learning directly from the source cited, former Texas Supreme Court Justice Raul Gonzalez. Roughly translated, ya basta means "enough is enough."
As Roger observed:
The 13th Ct App (notoriously lenient in putting up with the difficult appellant) finally sanctions someone and their lawyer for a frivolous mandamus. After finding counsel's citation to authority so bad as to be "bad faith", the court states:
Finally, we order Mr. Leas to cease and desist from filing frivolous motions and pleadings in this Court and the trial court.(82) Ya Basta!(83)Sanctions with salsa. Only in Texas.
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