Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
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.
Veteran appellate lawyer Anne Johnson joined Norton Rose Fulbright earlier this month from Tillotson Johnson & Patton, where she built a reputation as one of the top appellate lawyers in Texas.
The Texas Lawbook spoke with Johnson recently about her move to Norton Rose, trends she’s seeing in her practice and more.
The U.S. Supreme Court Friday decided that an environmental damages lawsuit in a Louisiana state court against oil and gas giant Chevron USA should rightly be removed to federal jurisdiction because of the company’s history as a vendor for petroleum products during World War II.
Chevron was represented by Paul Clement of Clement & Murphy. Plaquemines Parish was represented by Louisiana Solicitor General J. Benjamin Aguiñaga and Victor Marcello of Talbot, Carmouche & Marcello in Baton Rouge.
The Trump administration is trying to persuade a federal appeals court to restore President Donald Trump’s executive orders against Houston-based Susman Godfrey and three other law firms, arguing that a president’s power to declare the firms national security threats is "unreviewable" by the courts.
More than a dozen legal groups representing corporate general counsel, smaller law firms, former judges and law professors filed amicus briefs Friday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit supporting Susman Godfrey and three other corporate law firms that are the targets of punishing executive orders by President Donald Trump.
The briefs signed by 21 law professors at Texas law schools, 23 small-firm lawyers in Texas and several prominent Texas firms asked the appellate court judges to uphold four lower court rulings that declared the presidential executive orders unconstitutional.
President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting Susman Godfrey “violates the First Amendment many times over,” is “odious viewpoint discrimination” and should be declared unconstitutional and illegally unenforceable.
With that opening argument, lawyers for Susman Godfrey filed a new brief Friday asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to uphold a lower court ruling permanently restraining President Trump’s executive order issued last spring targeting the Houston litigation powerhouse from being enforced. Two other corporate law firms that were the targets of President Trump’s EOs — WilmerHale and Jenner & Block — also filed briefs in their respective cases, which have been consolidated before the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.
Without writing a single sentence to explain why, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday officially ended any efforts by tens of thousands of Texas citizens and small businesses to sue power generators for personal injuries, wrongful deaths and property damages suffered during Winter Storm Uri in February 2021.
The decision is a huge victory for large power generators such as Luminant, NRG, Calpine, Exelon and Sempra Energy, who argued that the lawsuits, which sought billions of dollars in damages, should be dismissed because the unprecedented weather, not the companies’ actions, was responsible for the injuries and damages.
In this edition of Asked & Answered, Beck Redden partner Russell Post shares how he went from resisting the idea of attending law school to contemplating a career as a law professor. For Post, who recently secured a win at the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming a law professor is no longer a goal of his, but teaching isn’t out of the question.
Judge E. Grady Jolly, who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for 43 years, died Monday. He was 88.
Former Fifth Circuit Judge Gregg Costa wrote in a LinkedIn post that Judge Jolly had a "razor-sharp wit, was a world-class raconteur, and brought uncommon wisdom and judgment to deciding cases.
“Judge Jolly cared about the law and his views as much as anyone on the court. But after arguing his position with aplomb, he would walk out of the conference with his arm draped around the colleague with whom he had just disagreed, telling jokes on his way to toasting the colleague with a cocktail. We need more of that good spiritedness these days."
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