Supreme Court of Texas

I'd spent about 25 years.

as a law clerk at the court, doing criminal defense work for a little while in that civil firm where I worked, and then also working in the biggest DA's offices in Texas, handling their appellate work, filing briefs in nearly every appellate court in the state, arguing cases multiple times in the Court of Criminal Appeals, arguing a case in the Texas Supreme Court, filing briefs in the United States Supreme Court, And so I knew I was kind of ready.

I could do the job, but the politics was a little frightening.

You know, I didn't know anything about how politics worked.

In those intermediate courts of appeals, they hear criminal and civil cases.

But if a case is going to progress out of one of those intermediate level courts of appeals and make it up to one of our high courts, it makes a difference whether it's civil or criminal.

If it's civil, then you have to seek review in the Texas Supreme Court.

And if it's criminal, then you have to seek review in the court where I work, the Court of Criminal Appeals.

There are some interesting peculiarities to all of this that, you know, that I think are going to be, you know, kind of, I don't think it's as clear cut for anyone, but I will say that They just ruled in Maryland this week in another case and upheld the Methodist Trust Clause.

And so it'll be interesting to see what the Texas Supreme Court ends up doing with that because it is a little different from the Episcopal

Church.

Yeah, the Episcopal Church should have won, but the Texas Supreme Court sucks.

Well, I mean, part of it was that the Episcopal Church Texas law says that a trust is revocable unless you specifically say it's irrevocable.

And the Dennis clause did not.

If they're getting behind on their work, your case, say you're in Travis County and you get convicted of murder, your case could get shipped to Amarillo or El Paso or one of the courts of appeals that is not behind on its work.

And that's a decision the Texas Supreme Court will make.

No matter.

And that's a problem because judges are not like typical elected representatives, but they are elected.

They've got staff to do that, but it's a tall order, which is why Texas, I think, is wise to have two separate high courts.

Once you get out of the intermediate courts of appeals, the numbered courts, if your case is criminal, it goes to the Court of Criminal Appeals.

If it's civil, it goes to the Texas Supreme Court.

You can argue over who has a fancier name, but we are both co-equal Supreme Courts for our areas of law.

How do we make them look like the bad guy here? Well, the joke's on them for now because we're going to have to wait a little longer to find out who is actually behind the mailers.

The Texas Supreme Court just issued a stay in the case.

Now, I just, you know, we're talking about people jumping to conclusions.

And I would like to introduce you to someone not previously mentioned on the show, but I think someone who now deserves a mention for all the wrong reasons.