This blog originally appeared at The Texas Tribune.
A federal judiciary full of ideological allies is helping Texas block Democratic priorities and advance right-wing legal doctrines. But the bigger prize is conservative control of the rule of law itself.
Righting the Rule of Law
For decades, an increasingly powerful movement of conservative lawyers, born from the Texas Office of the Attorney General, had been shouldering its way into the federal judiciary, filing lawsuit after lawsuit in an attempt to slowly reshape the nation’s jurisprudence to its liking.
The election of President Donald Trump swung the doors wide open and ushered them inside.
Trump entered office with more judicial vacancies than almost any president in U.S. history, and a resolute commitment to fill those openings with conservative loyalists. Texas, the workhorse of the movement, was rewarded especially richly, with more new federal district and appellate judges appointed than any other state.
Many of these new appointees shared a strikingly similar professional background.
“The number of alums from the [Texas Office of the Solicitor General] who now wear robes on a daily basis, and not just because they have curious sartorial decisions, is an amazing and impressive thing,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, a former Texas solicitor general himself, at a Federalist Society event in 2019.
The progeny of Texas’ conservative legal revolution no longer just bring their legal theories before the federal bench. Now they’re sitting on it, ready to decide cases built on the same legal arguments they helped shape over the last two decades.
“They’re young, they’re smart, they’re principled, they’re constitutionalists,” Cruz said. “That is an incredible legacy, and it’s a legacy Texas is going to be benefitting from 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years from now.”
Transforming the district courts
When President Barack Obama left office, about half of Texas’ 52 federal judgeships were filled by Republican appointees, about a third were Democratic appointees and a full 20% were vacant, having languished under a Democratic president who didn’t prioritize judicial nominees and two Republican Texas senators who did.
After Trump was elected, those roadblocks swiftly resolved. Politically aligned with the president, Cruz and Sen. John Cornyn basically had free rein to nominate district judges. In 2013, Democrats eliminated the 60-vote requirement for judicial appointments, so with a Republican majority in the Senate, Cruz and Cornyn didn’t have to worry too much about finding consensus picks.
After years of helping Texas bring conservative causes to the courts, the senators had an opportunity to influence who would hear those cases going forward. And they took it, nominating a class of young, conservative judges, many of whom had helped build the litigation machine at the Texas attorney general’s office.
Brantley Starr, who worked under Cruz in the solicitor general’s office and “side by side” with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, was appointed as a district judge in Dallas. David Morales, one of Abbott’s top deputies at the attorney general’s office and former general counsel to Gov. Rick Perry, was appointed in Corpus Christi.
Former Deputy Solicitor General Sean Jordan was appointed in Plano, and then attended the swearing-in for J. Campbell Barker, who joined the bench in Tyler.
click here to see full blog: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/07/31/texas-federal-courts-conservative-takeover-trump/
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