Cautious and low-profile, it dodges election hazards to preserve the status quo. The Texas Supreme Court has a unique structure, reflecting the state’s stubbornly independent-minded culture. Most state supreme courts have jurisdiction over civil and criminal cases and have seven (or fewer) memb…

In Jonathan Swift’s classic fable, Gulliver’s Travels, a shipwreck maroons Lemuel Gulliver, the ill-fated crew’s sole survivor, on a remote island (Lilliput) inhabited by people only six inches tall. Upon reaching shore, the exhausted Gulliver falls asleep, unaware of the island’s tiny oc…

Herein lies a cautionary tale. If publicly funded higher education can be hijacked in America’s most conservative state, under the noses of a legislature with lopsided Republican majorities in both houses, and with a Republican governor and Republican lieutenant governor, it can (and likely wil…

Liberal enclaves threaten conservative hegemony in the Lone Star State. The general perception of Texas as reliably conservative is accurate: its rural and suburban areas are overwhelmingly red, and currently ensure a conservative policy direction at the statewide level. But enclaves within the L…

The March 1 oral argument was an astounding anti-climax to a manufactured drama In a prior post, I discussed the Pidgeon v. Turner case, now pending before the Texas Supreme Court, involving a taxpayer challenge to same-sex spousal benefits. Oral argument was held on March 1. The taxpayers chal…

Is Texas’s attorney general a corrupt officeholder or an innocent official being railroaded by political rivals? Texas history is filled with larger-than-life figures who overcame long odds and severe hardships. In many ways, the frontier ethos persists 181 years after the fall of the Alamo. Un…

White males need not apply for the bar’s board of directors. We now take racial equality for granted, but during the long-gone era of state-sanctioned segregation in Texas and throughout the South, one commonly encountered signs proclaiming “No Colored Allowed” and “Whites Only.” The da…

No white males need apply for an opening on the state bar’s board. Those seats are reserved for minorities. Modern America takes racial equality for granted. Discrimination based on race has been forbidden throughout the country for decades thanks to Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Ri…

The widely disparate official responses to two recent campus protests at UT speak volumes. For all I know, the political climate at the University of Texas at Austin is no better or no worse than at any other major university, but since I am a UT alumnus and live in Austin, I pay closer attention…