The Texas Supreme Court recently sent to the Legislature a proposed plan for redistricting the 14 existing state courts of appeals. For more information, see the article in TDCAA's Issues in Prosecution.

Comments?

Re-districting is needed. Overlapping jurisdiction should never have been utilized. Docket equalization works, but creates those situations where you end up with conflicts in the applicable law and the judges deciding the case being accountable only to a different set of voters. But any 19 judge court is probably too big to avoid internal conflicts and I pity whoever decides to run in the 55 county 11th District. Kind of ironic that an appellate court sitting in the smallest "city" in the nation would govern such a large piece of real estate. I am sure the numbers are right, but the plan will probably never gain acceptance.

You know that as soon as that was posted, a bunch of sitting justices started calling their legislator friends. I think the best you will see is an elimination of overlapping districts and possibly the addition of seats in population centers.

Looks like some folks in the Valley aren't too pleased with the plan and are mulling over a possible challenge under the Voting Rights Act, should this become law:

The Brownsville Herald

The Eastland court might not stay in Eastland. Check out the other cities in that district to see who might make the power play to get its own court of appeals.

I guess no one thought back when the Ranger boom was going on that it would ever be any different. Sad.

John: Abilene was certainly smaller back in the 20's, but I am not sure how much the Ranger Oil Field had to do with locating the court in Eastland. If you get the opportunity sometime when (former) Chief Justice McCloud is in Dallas ask him to fill you in on how the court came to be there. It is a very interesting piece of history. I have heard the story, but unfortunately I need to hear it again myself to be able to pass it on.

The proposed change would at least solve my problem of how to cite the opinions of the Thirteenth Court. The plan does not seem to deal with the Fifteenth Court of Appeals. 74 S.W.3d at 48.

[This message was edited by Martin Peterson on 12-19-02 at .]

I guess I was just thinking that, back in the boom days and before the collapse of the old style rural economy, that the Eastland area probably seemed like the center of gravity of something big. I'm sure, however, there is a great story for "why Eastland." Chief Justice Phillips produced an interesting report several years ago explaining the historical politics behind some of the multi district counties. Funny reading. Anyway, the reformed 11th district would appear to have a new center of gravity, somewhat to the west. There won't be another District--no money for the new infrastructure.

Actually, something like that has happened in the past.

The court finally got remodeling and updates from its "landlord." I think at the time that the court had the power to compel the "landlord" to pay for other digs if the "landlord" refused to fix the old ones, which everyone agreed were bad. Of course, that merely dealt with different buildings rather than moving the official "seat."

I wonder if anyone with visions of nabbing a court of appeals actually has a blank check from a commissioner's court for the several million dollars it would cost to provide chambers for the justices, offices for the staff/research/briefing attorneys, offices for the clerks and non-lawyer staff, library space, file space, security, and technology infrastructure. Even the smallest court of appeals would be an expensive prize of questionable value to the politicians paying the bill.

John,

You'll be amused to know that the first time I ran spellcheck using Word Perfect, the suggested replacement for Eastland was "Wasteland." One wonders if the redistricting people had the same experience.

As a past briefing attorney from Eastland I have to say what the court may lack in modernization it makes up for in beauty. I have been to the Dallas, Austin, Amarillo, and Texarkana courts of appeal and none of them can hold a candle to the beauty of the Eastland court. While it may be a wasteland to some, it holds a unique and charming atmoshpere to others.

Patricia, you have, of course correctly described the 3rd floor courtroom. The 5th floor courtroom was somewhat different. If for no other reason than the hard work put into the present courtroom, it would be a tragedy for the court to be moved to Abilene or Midland or one of the other 52 choices.

You are so correct about the 5th floor courtroom. But try being a briefing attorney. That was even worse then the courtroom. Further, we had the enjoyment of climbing up and down that unique spiral staircase. I agrre it would be ashame to move it to some drab modern building that has no beauty even though I would enjoy the benefits of a move to Abilene since I am the appellate attorney here.