Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
In this edition of Asked & Answered, Third Court of Appeals Justice Rosa Lopez Theofanis shares how she sees AI impacting the appellate process and dishes on what lawyers practicing before her shouldn’t do. Justice Theofanis, who is the first sitting judge to participate in Asked & Answered, joined the all-female panel in January 2023.
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday determined 5-4 that Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 52.006(b)(2), which applies a $25 million cap on bonds posted to appeal, applies per judgment debtor.
Dallas County Court at Law Judge D’Metria Benson said the mandatory mask mandate that she ordered for all participants in her courtroom is necessary to protect a personal health condition that makes her “highly susceptible to infection.”
But the lawyer who originally made the allegations said he has recently witnessed Judge Benson at campaign fundraisers and events where neither the judge nor anyone was wearing a mask.
Houston personal injury lawyer Michelle Teresa Acosta had sued San Antonio divorce lawyer Allan Roy Manka after she said he “grabbed” and “squeezed” her butt in the lobby of the Wilson County Courthouse in Floresville in June 2019. A jury agreed, and awarded her $5 million in compensatory damages. This week, that award was left intact by the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonio.
Federal courts cannot review President Donald Trump’s executive orders denying security clearance to anyone or any group of people, even if those orders target all Asians or Hispanics, Catholics or Jews, a lawyer for the Trump administration told a federal appeals court Thursday.
“It is not reviewable,” Abhishek Kambli, a lawyer with the U.S. Justice Department, told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
But the attorney for the four law firms argued that President Trump’s EOs targeting them last year had nothing to do with national security, but instead were motivated by viewpoint discrimination.
The court battle between the Trump administration and four corporate law firms, including Houston-based Susman Godfrey, is being argued Thursday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
While many legal scholars agree that the likelihood of winning the appeal decisively favors the law firms, the focus will be on appellate Judge Neomi Rao, a conservative jurist, former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and champion of the Federalist Society.
Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice James Blacklock has told a Dallas trial judge that she needs to reconsider her standing order requiring mask mandates and disclosure of personal health information before entering her courtroom.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson shared stories from her early years at the Southern Methodist University Tate Lecture Series Tuesday evening. Justice Jackson is the third U.S. Supreme Court justice to visit the university campus in the last week.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch visited the George W. Bush Presidential Center on Southern Methodist University’s campus Saturday afternoon for a talk and reading of his children’s book Heroes of 1776. Young children gathered to hear who the justice’s favorite heroes were.
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday dealt a blow to the maker of a nicotine pouch product, finding that the company’s VELO pouches are subject to the same duty levied on cigars, chewing tobacco and snuff. But the court did leave one door open for RJR Vapor.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke about her book Listening to the Law at the George W. Bush Presidential Center on Southern Methodist University’s campus Monday evening. From clerking for Justice Antonin Scalia to ruling on a death penalty case, Justice Barrett covered a few topics in her book.
Facing a “tsunami of litigation” driven by the Trump administration’s expansive classification of noncitizens as “applicants for admission” — making them ineligible for bond — lawyers and judges in the Northern District of Texas have “answered the call,” with attorneys stepping forward to represent immigrants on a pro bono basis and with judges working around the clock to issue timely, thoughtful orders, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix said Friday during closing remarks at the district’s annual Bench Bar Conference, held this year in Arlington.
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