On Monday, a special event is being held at the Texas Supreme Court to mark the publication of “The Texas Supreme Court: A Narrative History, 1836-1986” by James Haley.

The book begins around the time of Texas became an independent Republic in 1836 and ends in 1986, which is both an even 150 years and a smooth place to divide history from the present day. (( The modern Republican Court began to form in 1988, with the elections of Justice Hecht and former Chief Justice Phillips. ))

The description on Amazon teases that the book “use[s] a lively narrative style rather than a legalistic approach.” I hope that won’t dissuade too many appellate readers from ordering.

It continues:

[Haley] focuses on the personalities and judicial philosophies of those who served on the Supreme Court, as well as on the interplay between the Court’s rulings and the state’s unique history in such areas as slavery, women’s rights, land and water rights, the rise of the railroad and oil and gas industries, Prohibition, civil rights, and consumer protection.

That’s quite a bit to pack into 344 pages.

The ceremony of the Court receiving a copy of the book will be held on Monday February 11, 2013 at 4:00 p.m. in the Texas Capitol Building’s historic courtroom (not the regular court chamber). Seating is limited, but the Court does plan to live-stream the ceremony, preserving the event for posterity — or at least for you to view it at your convenience later.

The author will also be speaking at the CLE program “The History of Texas Supreme Court Jurisprudence” (brochure) on April 11, 2013, jointly sponsored by the State Bar and the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society.

The year ended quietly at the Texas Supreme Court. The first orders list of 2013 included no opinions or grants.

The turning of the calendar also marked the end of Justice Medina’s service on the Court. His final signed opinion was in The State of Texas and the Texas Department of Transportation v. NICO-WF1, L.L.C., No. 11-0312 on November 2, 2012.

Meanwhile, Justice Boyd (who had succeeded Justice Wainwright earlier in the month) hit the ground running. Each of the Court’s three signed majorities from December was joined by Justice Boyd.

The Court will be holding oral arguments this week in Austin, and next week will bring the formal investiture of new Justices (on Monday) and the Court’s first private conference of the year (on Tuesday).

Scott Henson of Grits for Breakfast published a history-centered post on Saturday that covers some interesting stories from the Texas Supreme Court’s past. If you’re a fan of history, or of habeas writs, you should check it out.

You will find:

• An account given by former Justice A.W. Terrell of a dramatic showdown during the Civil War between Chief Justice Moore and a confederate general who refused to acknowledge a writ of habeas corpus issued to save some accused union sympathizers from military punishment.

• The five Justices of the Texas Supreme Court (including Moore) who were removed from office by the U.S. military during reconstruction, and what became of them.

• “The Semicolon Court”: the derisive name given to the Reconstruction-era justices who wrote Ex part Rodriguez, an 1874 decision holding invalid the 1873 gubernatorial election that the Democratic candidate (former Justice Coke) had appeared to win 2-1 over the Republican incumbent. The Rodriguez appeal arose from a prosecution for voter fraud — Rodriguez was charged with voting twice in that election. His defense? That the whole election had been unconstitutional. Rodriguez won his defense, but the Governor ignored the ruling.

Source: “Habeas writs that helped define Reconstruction-era Texas” (Grits for Breakfast)

Today, Governor Perry appointed Jeffrey S. Boyd to fill the vacancy on the Texas Supreme Court created when Dale Wainwright stepped down from the bench. Boyd will take the bench on December 3, 2012.

With this appointment, the Court now has a full complement of Justices. The Texas Senate will have a chance to confirm the appointment when it next convenes. This term will then run through the end of 2014 (when the next statewide general election is held).

Before this appointment, Boyd had most recently served as Perry’s chief of staff, and before that, his general counsel. His career before that included stops in the private bar (at Thompson & Knight) and senior positions in the Texas Attorney General’s Office.

Coverage:

• Texas Tribune

• Texas Lawyer

• Statesman

Justice Dale Wainwright has announced that he is stepping down from the Texas Supreme Court in the next two weeks.

The news was circulated today by the Court’s public information officer.

Justice Wainwright had been elected to the Court in 2002, and his current term runs through 2014. Given the timing, a replacement Justice named by the Governor could complete the two remaining years of the term before standing for reelection in 2014. (( Under the Texas procedures for judicial vacancies, the appointment would take effect immediately if made while the Texas Senate is still in recess. The Senate will then have an opportunity to confirm the appointment when it reconvenes in January 2013. ))

Justice Wainwright will be joining Bracewell & Giuliani’s office in Austin.

News articles are still appearing about the Court’s opinions from August 31st:

• Michael Maslanska writes “Texas Supreme Court refuses to engraft Ledbetter Act onto the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act”, discussing Prairie View A&M University v. Diljit K. Chatha, No. 10-0353 .

• The Energy Law Blog writes: “Texas Supreme Court Holds JOA Exculpatory Clause Applicable to All Activities of Operator” about Wendell Reeder v. Wood County Energy, LLC; Wood County Oil & Gas, Ltd.; Nelson Operating..., No. 10-0887 .

• Legal Newsline reports: “Texas SC orders judge to clarify why he disregarded verdict” about In re United Scaffolding, Inc., No. 10-0526

• The Texas Tribune writes: “Texas Sees Rising Tide of Property-Rights Cases”, which while discussing larger trends, mentions “four decisions on land-use issues” from August 31, as well as Texas Rice Land Partners, Ltd. and Mike Latta v. Denbury Green Pipeline-Texas, LLC, No. 09-0901 .

• And the team at Texas Appellate Watch continues its series summarizing cases from the August 31st orders list.

Justice Rose Vela drops out of the race to challenge Thirteenth Court Chief Justice Roy Valdez

The article from the Corpus Christi paper is here: “Justice Rose Vela bows out of race : Incumbent Chief Justice Roy Valdez, a Democrat, will be unopposed in the November election”

It offers this account of the reasons:

Fil Vela, who beat former Solomon P. Ortiz staffer Denise Saenz Blanchard in the Democratic congressional runoff with almost 67 percent of the vote, is in a strong position to take the Rio Grande Valley-centric seat over Republican candidate Jessica Puente Bradshaw.

He said the potential of having a sitting state chief justice and U.S. representative in the same household posed challenges to their time and schedules.

“Logistically, it’d be a nightmare,” he said.

Oral arguments begin this week

The Court will hear its first oral arguments of the term on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. After a late cancellation, there are seven cases scheduled for this September sitting.

The Court publishes a complete list of the upcoming arguments on this page.

Here are some of the decisions from this week’s orders list that have made the newspapers (or at least have been picked up by my Google alerts):

The blog 600commerce, which focuses on cases from the Dallas Court of Appeals, has a summary of U-Haul International, Inc. d/b/a U-Haul, U-Haul Co. of Texas... v. Talmadge Waldrip, Bernice Waldrip, Dinah Simington..., No. 10-0781

Craig Estlinbaum (who blogs at Adjunct Law Prof Blog) writes about Enbridge Pipelines (East Texas) L.P. v. Avinger Timber, LLC, No. 10-0950 . His post is “Supreme Court of Texas Applies Value-to-the-Taker Rule in Condemnation Case”, discussing the Court’s decision to exclude both sides’ expert witnesses about valuation of a piece of rural land.

Bob Mabry, who focuses on the Ninth Court in Beaumont at the blog Courts and Writing, has a post about the civil-commitment case In re Commitment of Michael Bohannan, No. 10-0605 .

The Statesman writes that “Austin prevails in long-running legal dispute over downtown property” regarding City of Austin v. Harry M. Whittington, et al., No. 10-0316

KUT reports on the same case: “Whittington Loses (Again), But Says He’s Not Done”

The Statesman also notes “Texas high court hands victory to Austin architect in liability case” about the petition denial in Lou Ann Smith and Jimmy Jackson Smith, individually and as next friend of Rachel and Grayson Smith v. Black+Vernooy Architects, J. Sinclair Black and D. Andrew Vernooy, No. 11-0731

Some older stories

Here are a few of the other stories that accumulated on my desk in August:

• Statesman: “Texas Supreme Court accepts business-tax case” about In re Nestle USA, Inc., No. 12-0518

• StateImpact/NPR: “Texas Supreme Court Reinforces Denbury Decision on Eminent Domain. Again.” about Texas Rice Land Partners, Ltd. and Mike Latta v. Denbury Green Pipeline-Texas, LLC, No. 09-0901

• The Flower Mound Leader Star website has an update on Town of Flower Mound, Texas v. Rembert Enterprises, Inc., No. 12-0290

When I saw this tweet last night, my first thought was that I’ve clearly been blogging about the wrong things.

Federal Judge orders Google/Oracle to disclose their paid journos & bloggers by noon 8/17: j.mp/S13ITe Crikey!

— Ernest Svenson (@ernieattorney) August 7, 2012

This order in the Google/Oracle trial (( If you were attended my talk at the UT appellate CLE, you heard a little about the Google/Oracle case. )) reaches from the legal scholarship (“treatises, articles”) all the way to the blogosphere or other commentary online. It requires the parties — not the reporters or scholars — to disclose any payments they have made by next Friday.

For an appellate lawyer, what’s especially interesting is the reason the judge gave for this order:

the disclosure required by this order would be of use on appeal or any remand to make clear whether any treatise, article, commentary or analysis on the issues posed by this case are possibly influenced by financial relationships to the parties or counsel.

In effect, Judge Alsup is asking the parties to make the same kind of disclosures about paying commentators outside the courtroom as would be needed if those same commentators had filed a more formal amicus brief.

In federal appellate courts, a potential amicus filer is required to disclose whether the brief has been paid for by anyone else, including one of the parties. (( Fed. R. App. P. 29(c)(5): requiring “a statement that indicates whether: … (B) a party or party’s counsel contributed money that was intended to fund preparing or submitting the brief;…” The rule also requires disclosure if counsel for one of the parties contributed time instead of money (by writing part of the brief) or whether any other outside group has contributed. The U.S. Supreme Court has a similar disclosure requirement. )) A similar rule holds in Texas appellate courts, which require amicus briefs to “disclose the source of any fee paid or to be paid.” Tex. R. App. P. 11(c).

This idea of treating the web of legal scholarship as a giant amicus brief is new to me, and I’m still digesting it.

The reality is that judges can’t sequester themselves away from all commentary about the legal issues in a case — good legal research, after all, would ask appellate court staff to look through recent publications about a cutting-edge legal issue while working on an opinion. And given the choice, I’d much rather have a court that is reading too much than a court that deliberately tries not to learn about the subject. (( See also: My talk at the UT appellate CLE, where I discussed how Judge Alsup had, during the Google/Oracle trial, learned enough about the Java programming language to really press counsel for Oracle on whether a small subroutine deserved copyright protection. ))

I can see how parties would complain, if they saw this sort of effort as general public relations — but when carried out through sock puppets or shills, the grounds for complaint seem more tenuous. (( And if they weren’t trying to influence the court’s view, they might be asked whose view they wanted to influence. If one of the foreseeable groups of readers is “investors,” an angry judge could be the least of their problems. )) And I can absolutely see why legal scholarship (and the willingness of courts to rely on it) might be seriously damaged if litigants were seen as paying for favorable commentary.

Judge Alsup’s order noted that he had become concerned that payments had been made here. I’ll be curious to see whether the parties comply — or whether they try to field a First Amendment argument to oppose the order. (( So far as I can tell, the interest implicated is really about anonymity of the person funding the speech rather than any effect on the message of the speech. As anyone who’s ever read a campaign-finance case will tell you, that complicates things. ))

Added: After posting this, I came across this article by Tim Lee of Ars Technica. It conveys the thoughts of some other lawyers, including the observation that this resembles amicus practice.