My newest article: "The Number NINE"....

      I'm happy to announce the publication of a short legal-historical article that I entitled "The Number Nine: Why the Texas Supreme Court Has the Same Number of Justices As the United States Supreme Court." 


     In the article I compare the Texas Supreme Court (the "SCOTX") and the U.S. Supreme Court (the "SCOTUS") and then ask the question reflected in the title, as follows:

     "A comparison of the two courts shows that the number of nine seats is one of the fundamental ways in which the two courts are alike. The other two similarities are that each is created in organic law—the constitution—of the respective government—federal or state—of which each is a component and that each is the court of last resort, or apex, of the judicial branch of its respective government and accompanying legal system.     Profound differences also obtain, of course. The SCOTUS is staffed by justices appointed by the President, and those justices enjoy lifetime tenure and protection against salary reduction during “good Behaviour." SCOTUS justices exit the bench only by death, resignation, or—since 1937—retirement. In contrast, the SCOTX is composed of justices who have won statewide election to serve fixed terms of only six years, on a staggered basis. The Texas justices thus serve at the pleasure of any majority of voters in an ongoing series of elections. Moreover, SCOTX justices have an age limitation of, more or less, 75 years; and they are not protected against salary reductions by the Legislature.     Moreover, while the number of nine justices is legislatively determined for the SCOTUS, it is constitutionally established for the SCOTX. To change the number of justices, an appropriate vote is required—by very different voters: by Members of Congress and Senators voting to revise the federal Judicial Code for the SCOTUS and by a statewide vote of Texas citizens in a constitutional-amendment election for the SCOTX. And while no SCOTUS justice has ever left the bench to run subsequently for office in the executive or legislative branches, the SCOTX is a springboard for election to such other offices.     With that comparison as background, consider now that first one of the three basic similarities of the two supreme courts—that is, both courts have the same number of justices, nine. The number of nine justices composing the SCOTUS has been fixed for a century and a half, since Congress enacted the Judiciary Act of 1869 in the aftermath of the Civil War; as noted, that number is 'carved in stone' as a result of the 1937 crisis. But the number of nine justices staffing the SCOTX is of much more recent vintage, dating from the adoption of a state constitutional amendment only 73 years ago, in 1945.     So, a pertinent question for Texas legal history is why and how did nine become the number of justices for Texas’s highest civil court,13 the SCOTX, mirroring that of the SCOTUS?"
My article posits the answer to that question.....see the article here:  https://www.yourhonor.com/web/images/pdfs/IC/2010s/IC_SUMMER_2018/24/





The Legal History Discussion Group of the Dallas Bar Association

During the 39 years I practiced law, I continued to nurse along my own historical projects, mainly in the area of legal history, as time occasionally permitted; and I thought to myself, "There must be other lawyers in Dallas like me, practitioners who have maintained a keen interest in history and who have their own projects." Then, twelve years ago, the redoubtable Peter Vogel (the "first computer lawyer in Texas" and a former President of the Dallas Bar Ass'n) suggested that I just create and announce my own group, informally but under the capacious umbrella of the Dallas Bar Ass'n, and see who shows up. So I did, naming the ad hoc group the "DBA Legal History Discussion Group." I made the first presentation on October 17, 2007, with a small handful of historically minded lawyers in attendance.

And then it took off. Over the past eleven years, I've organized 61 legal history presentations, almost even divided between academics, both historians and law professors, and Dallas lawyers who have a book or an article or a research project. I always obtain "continuing legal education" credit for the lawyer-attendees of the one hour presentations, and the sessions are always free of charge. It has been for me the hosting of a sort of a wide ranging seminar, as disclosed by the topics and speakers reported on this list:

---> https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KS6VeSGYr6JpTKU6QMGbK1dyMVDOP9gx

For more information, contact me . . . . and in future posts, I will be talking about what exactly is "legal history" these days . . . .