Former Justice Craig Enoch wrote an op-ed piece for the Austin American-Statesman about the upcoming election, “Enoch: Why electing good judges matters”.

Enoch note the drop off in the number of votes between the top-of-the-ballot races and the judicial races, placing fault on voters who do not educate themselves enough about the judicial candidates to form an opinion of them.

Meanwhile, former Justice (now-Senator) Cornyn has weighed in by filing an amicus brief in a case set for argument this Thursday at SMU. The case is City of Dallas v. Greg Abbott, No. 07-0931 (DocketDB), which is an open records case. The dispute is about whether a government entity waives its attorney-client protection for documents covered by a request if it fails to timely raise that objection to Open Records Division of the AG’s office.

The case, to my knowledge, doesn’t involve any questions of federal law. But Cornyn also held the post of Texas AG (from 1998 to 2002), and he may have submitted a brief to clarify the meaning of some of his own Open Records Decisions from his tenure. (Coincidentally, the same day that City of Dallas v. Abbott is being argued, the same day, the Court is also hearing oral arguments in the rehearing of the Entergy case, in which four legislators submitted a brief suggesting the Court had misunderstood their intentions. These types of “let me clarify my intent” briefs are fairly rare, so the students at SMU should have an interesting day.)