Merry Christmas to the State Courts

Summary

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Advisory Opinions: "Merry Christmas to the State Courts"

Podcast: Advisory Opinions by The Dispatch
Date: December 25, 2025
Hosts: Sarah Isgur & David French
Guests:

• Justice Evan Young, Texas Supreme Court
• Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz, Florida Supreme Court
• Judge Josh Deahl, DC Court of Appeals

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Episode Overview

This special holiday episode spotlights the unsung importance of state supreme courts in American justice. While Advisory Opinions often covers the U.S. Supreme Court, hosts David French and Sarah Isgur devote this episode to exploring the nuanced, impactful, and varied world of state high courts. The episode features an in-depth roundtable with three state supreme court justices, highlighting differences in court structures, judicial selection, dockets, and broader issues such as originalism, judicial elections, access to justice, and the effect of artificial intelligence on the courts.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why State Supreme Courts Matter

• State courts handle the vast majority of legal cases, with the state supreme court as the court of last resort for most litigants ([00:24], Sarah Isgur).
• The composition and decisions of state supreme courts often have greater day-to-day impact on individuals and businesses than the U.S. Supreme Court ([01:23], David French).

2. Judicial Selection: Elections, Appointments, and Tenure

Texas (Justice Evan Young)

• Texas justices are typically appointed to fill vacant seats but must win partisan elections later to stay on the bench ([06:37], Justice Young).
  • “I had three months and four days from when I took the oath ... before the voters of Texas had their chance to decide whether I crawled back to my law firm and hope they hadn’t given my office away yet or got to stick around...” ([06:37])
• Texas Supreme Court handles only civil (and juvenile criminal) matters; adult criminal matters go to a separate court ([07:28], Justice Young).
• Judges must campaign statewide, a process marred by low voter information and ballot quirks ([57:24], Justice Young).

Florida (Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz)

• Uses a nominating commission with gubernatorial appointment; retention elections are nonpartisan, up-or-down votes ([12:09], Muñiz).
  • “All of the members ... are appointed by the governor but a subset of them have to be people who are nominated ... by the Florida Bar.” ([12:09])
• No appellate judge has lost a retention election since the system began ([12:09]).

District of Columbia (Judge Josh Deahl)

• The DC Court of Appeals is not called a “supreme court”; judges are nominated by a commission, appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, and reviewed every 15 years by a local commission ([17:27], Judge Deahl).
• “Unlike my colleagues here, we do not have discretionary review ... we are the intermediate and the final court of appeals in DC” ([17:27]).

3. Court Structures, Docket Management, and Case Types

• Texas: High discretion in hearing cases: “99.9% of the cases ... we call it a petition for review, it’s exactly the same as a cert petition.” ([08:18], Justice Young)
• Florida: Discretionary docket triggered by conflicts, certified questions, and certain mandatory areas like death penalty appeals; court sets procedural rules ([15:42], Muñiz).
• DC: No discretionary review; hears all appeals as of right; high case volume with judges running panels/en banc as needed ([20:21], Judge Deahl).

Unique Texas Development: Business Courts

• Texas recently established a business court:
  • Appointed judges (not elected) for complex business disputes
  • “A lot of businesses are paying attention to it ... all signs are positive about the work of the business court.” ([09:49], Justice Young)

4. Constitutions, Originalism, and Interpreting State Law

• State constitutions change far more often than the U.S. Constitution, making “originalism” more complex ([25:51], Justice Young; [28:46], Muñiz).
  • “I've actually decided cases in which I was a ratifier … that creates kind of an odd question…” ([26:58], Young)
  • “We do have frequent amendments ... there are things put in the constitution that are really more at the level of detail of statute.” ([28:46], Muñiz)
• DC’s quasi-constitution, the Home Rule Act, is treated much like statutory interpretation ([32:50], Judge Deahl).

5. AI and Technology in the Courts

• Judge Deahl is “bullish” on AI’s potential for efficiency. Uses AI for tasks like video analysis; warns about reliability and “hallucinations” ([35:21], Judge Deahl).
  • “It can basically serve as an extra law clerk … If the chatbot can do it in a couple minutes what it takes my clerks a couple weeks … that’s valuable.” ([35:21])
• Pro se litigants are increasingly using AI to file credible briefs ([43:42], Judge Deahl).

6. Access to Justice

• Justice Young: System-wide strength benefits all; access isn’t just for the poor, but integral to confidence in the judiciary ([38:36], Young).
  • “If the people of Texas … do not believe that the judiciary of Texas is able to expeditiously and efficiently and fairly hear them … then they will lose confidence in the judiciary…” ([38:36])
• AI as a potential tool for unrepresented parties; risks and opportunities discussed ([43:42], Judge Deahl).
• Chief Justice Muñiz: State courts bear immediate responsibility for public access and administration – more so than federal courts ([45:28], Muñiz).

7. Courtroom Practice, Clerking, and Careers in State Courts

• Candor is the most impressive quality at oral argument ([46:38], Muñiz).
• Advantages of clerking for a state high court:
  • Texas Supreme Court clerks attend conferences and see deep internal deliberation ([47:47], Young).
  • “For a lawyer who wants to be a Texas lawyer at least, that’s … one heck of a turbocharge.” ([47:47], Young)

8. Forum Preferences: Why Litigants Choose Federal Over State Court

• Judge Deahl: Defendants often prefer federal court due to perceptions of fairness, resources, and backlog differences ([50:59], Judge Deahl).
• Discussion on perceptions versus reality regarding judge quality, docket management, and jury pools ([52:02], Deahl).

9. Judicial Elections: Pros, Cons, and Realities

• Justice Young: Texas citizens fiercely defend judicial elections—sometimes to the detriment of judicial quality, as many voters are uninformed ([57:24], Young).
  • “The people of Texas demand absolute control over who all their judges are, and the people of Texas demand to know almost nothing about who any of their judges are.” ([57:24], Young)
• Judicial reform is politically challenging; attempts at change often fail due to public distrust of “elite” selection methods ([59:57], Young).
• Notable Texas story: A justice elected due to a favorable ballot name and then indicted, fleeing to Grenada ([58:26], Young).

10. Audience Q&A Highlights

• AI abuse concerns: Both Texas and Florida are sticking with current judicial discipline/pleading rules; no special regulation of AI at this time.
  • “It’s tough to get judges to use the tools that they have ... we don’t really view it as anything that the existing sort of tools … can’t handle.” ([54:42], Muñiz)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the overlooked power of state courts:
  “The Supreme Court was just ... like watching cable news at night ... whereas the state supreme courts were: this matters for my job, … my clients’ lives.”
  – David French ([01:23])

• Texas judicial elections, candidly:
  “The people of Texas demand absolute control over who all their judges are, and ... demand to know almost nothing about who their judges are.”
  – Justice Evan Young ([57:24])

• On AI’s promise and peril:
  “I can see it ... I put it into a chatbot and ... that’s actually excellent analysis ... I think you have to approach [AI] with a great deal of skepticism.”
  – Judge Josh Deahl ([35:21])

• On the access to justice system:
  “Everyone has an interest, I should hope ... in ensuring that confidence in the judiciary ... both that it is perceived as being good and that it actually is.”
  – Justice Evan Young ([38:36])

• On judicial candor:
  “Candor always impresses me ... just acknowledging that you’re speaking to people who have to eventually make a decision ... especially ... where smart people, conscientious people, have disagreed ... help us resolve it.”
  – Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz ([46:38])

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Opening/Theme: [00:19]
• State Court vs. Federal Court: Why it matters: [00:24] – [02:20]
• Introductions of state supreme court justices: [04:20] – [05:36]
• Judicial selection and election systems: [06:37] – [13:01]
• Composition of dockets in TX/FL/DC: [07:21], [13:09], [17:16]
• Texas Business Courts: [09:42] – [11:43]
• Historical changes to courts’ dockets/discretion: [21:40]
• Originalism and state constitutions: [25:51] – [32:47]
• AI, technology & court efficiency: [35:10] – [37:25]
• Nuclear verdicts, plaintiff bar trends: [37:27]
• Access to justice concerns & system integrity: [38:36] – [46:30]
• Success at oral argument: [46:30] – [47:41]
• Clerking: career advice: [47:41] – [50:11]
• Why litigants try to avoid state courts: [50:22] – [53:43]
• Q&A: Policing AI abuse, judicial elections: [54:06] – [61:56]
• Closing thoughts on judicial elections & reform: [57:24] – [62:33]

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Tone & Style

• Lighthearted, collegial, and sometimes irreverent—imbued with legal insight, candor, and a bit of Texas humor (beef fajitas! [11:43], Sarah Isgur).
• Panelists engage in self-deprecation and behind-the-scenes commentary—Judge Deahl jokes about his mother misunderstanding his job, Young’s “feet of clay” metaphor, and the recurring Texas anecdotes.

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Takeaways

This episode is a rare, illuminating dive into the world of state high courts—a world shaping most Americans’ legal experience but rarely spotlighted. The justices’ candor about the quirks, challenges, and opportunities in their courts—along with the emerging importance of technology and the perennial debate over judicial selection—makes for essential listening (or reading) for anyone concerned with the machinery of American justice.

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Transcript

[Justice Evan Young]

You ready i was born ready.

[Sarah Isger]

Welcome.

[David French]

To a special christmas episode of advisory.

[Sarah Isger]

Opinions i'm sarah isger that's david french.

[David French]

David we told you all this was going to be available for ethics cle credit you can go to scotusblog dot com cle about half of the states are represented right now and you can go listen to it there and get your cle credit but if you're not interested in that stay here listen to it with us david this was a really fun conversation with three supreme court justices state supreme court justices because while this podcast focuses a lot on the us supreme court and the vast vast vast vast vast majority of cases happen in state court and your last appeal is to the state supreme court there is no us supreme court coming and we don't spend enough time on it and if anything i've thrown some like shade on state judges because they often in many states are elected in a partisan process and they stand for reelection in a partisan process but you know i figured we needed to hear some.

First person testimony when i was practicing until i transitioned almost fully over to first amendment and fourteenth amendment work honestly my interest in the supreme court the us supreme court was mainly sort of academic like i was very interested just as a matter of i really enjoyed constitutional law but when i was mainly a commercial litigator mainly litigating not exclusively but mainly in state courts the composition and jurisprudence of the state supreme court was far more immediately relevant to me my life my clients lives than the supreme court the supreme court was just that was sort of like watching cable news at night you know i'm very interested in that topic so i want to learn about it whereas the state supreme courts were this matters for my job this matters for my clients and you know i used to have a you know just be very interested in the composition of the state supreme courts.

Where i practice there's also something to be said for thinking about the state supreme courts as these laboratories of democracy when we think about reforms for the us supreme court you know what are the unintended consequences of the different ways of selecting judges and justices some are actually i think far more harmless than you'd probably think some maybe less so in my view and the powers given to those state supreme courts also can be quite different than the us supreme court in terms of control over litigation throughout their domains so a lot to discuss here as well as the types of cases that they see that the federal system will never see like parental termination cases some of the most serious important work that happens and the life changing work that happens that again is never going to get to federal court so we hope you enjoy our holiday special state supreme court justices.

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[Sarah Isger]

Welcome to advisory opinions i'm sarah isger and i am here at the beautiful chamber of commerce building in downtown washington dc for the installation institute for legal reform and we are doing a state court extravaganza sitting right here next to me is justice evan young of the texas supreme court he was appointed in twenty twenty one by governor abbott previous jobs include but are not limited to the department of justice baker botts and justice scalia and he went to duke and yale sitting next to him is chief justice carlos muniz of the florida supreme court he was appointed in twenty nineteen by governor desantis previous bosses include but are not limited to jeb bush and betsy devos you went to uva and yale i mean if you're into basketball at this point my husband went to purdue so he hates uva and replays that one scene in his head over and over and over again but everyone loves yale so that's fine oh good i'm glad the sarcasm came through all right last and least is.

[Justice Evan Young]

Judge.

[Sarah Isger]

Josh deal of the dc court of appeals his mother thinks he works for the dc circuit he was appointed in twenty nineteen by donald trump he was a dc public defender but most importantly the co clerk to my husband and for justice anthony kennedy he went to arizona state and michigan so guys let's jump right into this there have been multiple cases at the supreme court this term where people are begging to get into federal court save me from these state courts whether it's subpoenas or standing issues and so i thought we would just start with some of the obvious differences between the state and federal court before we jump into the why nobody wants you to decide their cases problem big difference between state and federal court is how you got there although i'll note that all three of you were appointed to your positions and yet that's not really how you stay there i.

[Justice Evan Young]

Was appointed and it was to fill an unexpired term my predecessor left the court to run for attorney general and i had three months and four days from when i took the oath swearing the oath on sam houston's bible incidentally before the voters of texas in the republican primary had their chance to decide whether i crawled back to my law firm and hope they hadn't given my office away yet or got to stick around to then fight the general election because someone else was going to win the democratic primary and i was able to prevail in both of those exhausting experiences and then have a six year term in which case we'll do it all over again my term is up in twenty twenty eight so that's fundamentally different from the federal courts will you.

[Sarah Isger]

Also talk about the texas system you for instance don't have criminal cases the.

[Justice Evan Young]

Texas supreme court by our constitution is the highest court we have jurisdiction over all civil cases and we do have criminal jurisdiction but we call it civilization if it's for juveniles that means we have a whole separate court the court of criminal appeals that deals with adult criminal cases and i've got to be honest i kind of like that those are i'm so grateful to my colleagues on the court of criminal appeals who are willing to devote their lives to seeing our citizens who are at their absolute worst some of these terrible stories and we have terrible cases too our parental termination cases are very terrible those are always tragedies but mostly we're able to have the luxury of supervising the courts of appeals in our state on the civil docket in a way that i don't think most of our colleagues in other states are able to do because the criminal cases are so important and we don't have to do it.

[Sarah Isger]

You'Re able to pick which cases you.

[Justice Evan Young]

Hear it's discretionary in almost all cases there are a few cases a trial court holds a statute unconstitutional the attorney general can appeal directly to us as an appeal but ninety nine point nine percent of the cases we call it a petition for review it's exactly the same as a cert petition and it will become a little bit more like a cert petition we think in january because right now texas we're very happy to be a unique state in so many ways one way that we're unique is that our supreme court my court does not grant petitions for review for oral argument until after you've done both the petition stage like yes that sounds good now do full briefs on the merits and then after you do that we'll decide whether we're going to actually hear your case or not which means that the petition stage briefing is just an antecedent step and then the merits briefs are just really petitions and i'm on the bench flipping through it and heading one of the respondents brief on the merits is often the court should deny the petition for review like well that ship has sailed here we are but it's a rational thing to do if you don't know whether the court's going to take the case we have proposed reform to our rules such that we would be like every other court of final review with discretionary jurisdiction from the us supreme court to all of the others that don't have mandatory jurisdiction and grant after the petition we're going to make our petitions a little longer grant after the petition and then people can file their merits briefs knowing they're coming to austin to argue in the.

[Sarah Isger]

Court last thing texas now has the new business courts will you just explain how that's going to change things on.

[Justice Evan Young]

The business docket yes we have a new business court with five divisions each with two judges right now but it is a court a single business court they're regional right now on this court not all parts of texas have access to it it's in the five biggest metropolitan areas those judges are unique for trial judges state trial judges in that they are not elected so there are ten of them and they are appointed by the governor confirmed by the senate right now for two year terms but the governor can just reappoint reappoint reappoint we'll see how that plays out that allows certain kinds of cases within the jurisdiction of the business court to go to an identifiable cadre of judges who have no responsibility or authority other than resolving complex business disputes and until the governor signed this bill until the business court opened about a year ago september a year ago texas was by far the largest state without any court with jurisdiction to focus on complex business litigation and now because of this we're able to bring cases in and provide very expeditious expert administration of justice and the business courts are the first trial courts in the texas system this is also very different from the federal system for the rest of our courts that write opinions the legislation requires them to write opinions most texas trial judges do not have any legal staff no lawyers that assist them no law clerks the business court judges do and so the hope is that this will become very successful and we'll be able to illustrate that trial judges for all cases might be better served by having that kind of assistance we might not need to create as many new judgeships so it's very exciting in texas and we're seeing this is being covered in the national media a lot of businesses are paying attention to it and i don't know that the results are yet in but all signs are positive about the work of the business court we've just had our first jury trial for example in the business court and i'm excited to see.

[Sarah Isger]

It work well you get all that and delicious beef fajitas if you file in the state of texas beef fajitas by the way invented in houston i feel like not enough people know that i'm a houstonian and also representing the tourism district chief justice let's talk florida your system different than texas you are not running in partisan elections with primaries and everything tell us that's right i.

[Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz]

Definitely i do not envy you evan that's impressive that you that you've made it through all that in florida we have a kind of more conventional system i think where we have judicial nominating commissions all of the members of which are appointed by the governor but a subset of them have to be people who are nominated to the governor by the florida bar and those commissions then produce a list of names for the governor's consideration he's required to choose from among the names on that list it's anywhere from three to six people once you're appointed then the appellate judges in florida have to stand for retention election so it's just a yes or no up or down vote so far historically this system has been in place since the mid seventies nobody has lost one yet so hopefully my goal is to not ever be not be the first.

[Sarah Isger]

Let'S talk about the makeup then of the florida supreme court's docket you do have the criminal docket we do but in addition y' all also get to.

[Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz]

Set the rules we do so one of the interesting things that we do is in our constitution rules of procedure for courts are set by the florida supreme court we have the ability to kind of initiate those things on our own we also rely on the florida bar has a lot of committees that generate proposals for our consideration probably of interest to this group we've been able to use that authority over the last five or six years to do some things that we hope are going to make the civil justice system more rational more fair more predictable for a long time in florida summary judgment even though our summary judgment rule the text of it was identically worded to the federal rule it was almost impossible to get summary judgment basically any kind of you know i think that people would a lot of the boilerplate in the opinions was if there's a scintilla of evidence on one side it could create a factual decision dispute we basically used the rulemaking process to essentially adopt sort of the federal standard for summary judgment so that you know it still gives people fair opportunities still gives them their day in court but does make summary judgment more of an actual real world possibility we've also made some improvements we hope on the discovery front we adopted an apex rule basically insulating high level officials whether in government or in corporations from discovery that isn't you know that isn't necessary where they don't have you know unique knowledge of what's going on and then finally we've done a fair amount on active case management in civil cases again the idea being that although in our rules for a long time there had been expressions of support for the idea of judicial case management the role of the trial court judge in florida was i think traditionally culturally much more passive we've tried to implement some changes to make it so that when people initiate a lawsuit in florida that there's going to be more certainty about the timing that there's going to be some you know while there's obviously always things come up and there has to be some flexibility but just more of a commitment to having an orderly schedule orderly discovery disclosures on the front end and you know essentially letting people understand you know once you enter the system and initiate this litigation that there's going to be you know kind of a light at the end of the tunnel of foreseeable end which the judge will be responsible for kind of you know managing the case to get it to that point rather than just sort of passively letting things kind of you know languish.

[Sarah Isger]

There it's a discretionary docket it is.

[Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz]

Although it sounds like in texas they have more discretion in our case most of what we hear is discretionary but there are certain triggers for it so there have to be conflicts among the intermediate appeals courts or they can certify questions of great public importance the exceptions are we have to hear appeals in all death penalty cases and if a state statute is declared unconstitutional then we have to hear that but so we do have most of what we do here is discretionary but it's within sort of a limited universe of things you.

[Sarah Isger]

Know that used to be the rule at the us supreme court too if a state declared a statute unconstitutional it would go to the courts up until nineteen eighty eight what about the criminal side like if you were to sort of give us a percentage of your docket how much is big business you know docket cases how much is criminal and how much is sort of that third bucket of either public law or smaller ball civil litigation so the death.

[Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz]

Penalty appeals are a fair amount of our docket it's not overwhelming but i say it's probably probably twenty five percent there is a fair amount of public law we have on the civil side i'd say it's kind of evenly divided up among things that would be of interest to the business community and then things like family law and that sort of thing not necessarily even kind of big business type tort law but kind of ordinary sort of accident type stuff so yeah so i'd say it's about the twenty five or thirty with the death slash criminal and then the rest is kind of a hodgepodge all right.

[Sarah Isger]

You'Re the only person i called judge on this panel but you are on the highest court of dc your whole system fascinates me i mean i don't know where you want to start yes.

[Judge Josh Deahl]

We are one of the courts where the high court we refer to us as judges the court is not called the dc supreme court it would make my life easier if it were i could stop both explaining to people that the dc court of appeals is the last stop in dc unless you go to the us supreme court and it would avoid my mom telling people that i'm on the dc circuit i think she might want to keep doing that even after rename so that's one oddity but there's just endless oddities about the district's court system because we are this quasi federal institution that was established by congress in the early seventies we go through what we call a judicial nomination commission in dc that commission is headed usually by a ddc judge a federal judge and select people one who's selected by the president a couple who are selected by the dc council one or two by the mayor and they send three names to the president who according to this congressional statute has to pick one of those three names so you're presidentially appointed but within some bounds that some people would suggest i've heard the argument that that avoids the appointments clause i hope it doesn't i would prefer to be constitutional than unconstitutional we go through the senate and we get confirmed and then we don't have to deal with any elections thankfully i would hate to have to do that even retention elections we do have a review process after fifteen years where another local commission distinct from the first one sort of takes a look at how you did over the last fifteen years and again by statute if they say keep them for another fifteen and they almost always do absent some really bad malfeasance or unless maybe some dementia has set in and then they might kindly suggest that you not apply for another fifteen years they will re up you for another fifteen years and also unlike my colleagues here we do not have discretionary review we are the intermediate and the final court of appeals in dc if you go to the dc superior court you have an appeal as of right to us and so we have an incredible volume of cases currently hamstrung a little bit by being short a couple of judges because the nomination and confirmation process tends not to be the senate's top priority to confirm dc judges seems like they're making some movements now but we've had one vacancy for the last last twelve years now and another vacancy for a couple of years so i'd really like to get those filled to get.

[Sarah Isger]

Some help and while these two guys sit en banc if you will every time you don't sometimes you sit in panels sometimes you sit as a full court because again as you said you know with all the systems we're familiar with there's three tiers federal almost every state i'm aware of except you not being a state but because you're only two tiers sometimes you're sitting as a panel sometimes it's all of you that's.

[Judge Josh Deahl]

Right so more often than not we sit as a three judge panel and that's on you know ninety nine percent of the cases maybe about three times a year we'll hear a case en banc and that's the whole group of us that makes for one particular oddity in our court which is when you sit as a panel you're bound by whatever the panel before you did you know we're not like a supreme court that can say oh let's read revisit that thing we did one hundred years ago we now disagree and want to do something different in order to do that you have to go en banc and we don't go en banc that often just because there's a huge resource constraint we've got thousands of cases that we decide i publish about twenty five opinions a year i write unpublished opinions maybe about thirty to forty a year everybody has a ton to do so when you're trying to drum up support to change something about the district's law and to go en banc part of that lobbying effort if you're trying to lobby other judges is often met with i'm too busy like we just have too much stuff to do i don't want to deal with another en banc argument now having said that we have one tomorrow you all are welcome to stop by you can come watch a case about whether or not somebody whether there is reasonable articulable suspicion to stop somebody who fled after slight interaction with officers if you're so inclined but we do it now and then but not.

[Sarah Isger]

Too often this is sort of interesting i hadn't thought about this before but in many ways your courts are almost different stages of what the supreme court has gone through so you're sort of the current texas here as the current supreme court in terms of your docket i would say florida is that pre one thousand nine hundred eighty eight some discretion a lot of discretion but not complete discretion dc interestingly represents that pre one thousand nine hundred twenty five court that didn't really have discretion over its docket and stuart banner in his most recent book the most powerful court in the world makes the argument that it was those nineteen twenty five discretionary changes to the us supreme court that made our current constitutional sort of jurisprudence because before then they were too busy if they discovered a new constitutional right it would mean a whole lot more cases coming to the court court so they were disinclined to ever sort of read new things into the law because they were overwhelmed with what they were currently doing there just wasn't a lot of judicial philosophy because there was no time for philosophizing speaking of which at the current federal supreme court there's a lot of talk of text history and tradition as the new originalism you guys have constitutions except except for you and your home rule stuff we'll get to that odc that's why you're on this panel because it's so much fun to think of how this could all be done differently texas and florida both have far more frequent amendments to their constitutions than the us constitution texas again my home state so i'm just going to be more familiar with this i mean texas has a fun history there's multiple constitutions we were an independent country for a while it's not like some of these stories where the language is identical or adjacently identical to the us constitution we're out there doing our own thing how does originalism work with multiple constitutions and again i want to be very clear we were our own country everyone the republic of texas and so how do we vindicate all of that we'll be.

[David French]

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[Sarah Isger]

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[Justice Evan Young]

Originalism is hard even in the federal system where we have all of these resources what did the text mean to reasonably educated speakers of english at the time it was adopted in the state constitutions we have the same obligation to find out what it meant to those who ratified each constitution but we generally have far less information about it there's a famous example at one of the texas ratifying conventions and there was an initial question well shall we pay for court reporter to transcribe it well hell no that's dollar two a day back then so we're not doing that and that tradition of thrift has certainly continued in texas government and that makes it harder right to be able to do some things now you said we have multiple constitutions we have one it's the eighteen seventy six constitution we have prior ones that one superseded them all that is our continuing live constitution the one hundred fiftieth anniversary will be in a week because it's christmas day today right yes this is.

[Sarah Isger]

Airing on christmas day so we're gonna.

[Justice Evan Young]

We'Re about to enter the one hundred fiftieth year and that's a big deal for texas because although the people of texas every other year vote on a host of amendments to our constitution our constitution is the second longest alabama i think is the longest ours is the second longest we amend it all the time we don't have citizen initiated referenda the legislature has to propose these by a vote of two thirds of each house and they come to the voters who usually will adopt them because if it's going to get two thirds of both houses probably it's okay but not always the most recent one to fail increase the maximum age for judges and that failed two years ago but that means that originalism is a little complicated because i've actually decided cases in which i was a ratifier i can remember standing in line at the polls to vote on a particular amendment to the constitution of texas which then has been part of litigation so that creates kind of an odd question in our minds but then we have all sorts of other amendments that are happening at all sorts of times throughout texas history and in each of them the goal is to figure out what the people of texas could reasonably have understood themselves to be doing at the time that they did it our belief is that that is what the law meant then it's what the law means today until the people of texas change it which they're free to do as i say they do this quite frequently but in principle it's no different from what the us supreme court does in practice it's much.

[Sarah Isger]

Harder chief justice it would seem to me that originalism at the supreme court where you have lots of resources for amici lots of professors diving into law review articles looks very different when it's you and your clerks with a constitution that not a lot of people have spent endless time with yeah that's true.

[Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz]

And what evan said about not necessarily having as much information about the provisions that resonates with with me it also resonates with me that florida like the way you described texas we do have frequent amendments one of the challenges that i think states face with you know when they're trying if they believe in originalism and they believe in some idea of you know kind of public meaning what could something reasonably have expected to be to be understood the legal content of that i think the interaction between federal and state law can get very interesting especially when you're talking about citizens initiatives it can be difficult to kind of figure out how much your view of the meaning of the language and state law should be influenced by maybe the background federal law that was there if you're thinking of sort of the drafters of things being very lawyerly and maybe things were coming from the legislature or whatever you might assume a certain backdrop for that whereas if it's a citizens initiative it may not be as reasonable to assume that the drafters and the voters necessarily had the same things in mind so that can be a challenge we also i think because of the ease of amendment are you know there's increasingly there are things that are put in the constitution that really are more at the level of detail of statute so you're not talking about the you know majestic generalities and stuff like that you'll have a six paragraph long regulatory scheme that gets put into the.

[Justice Evan Young]

Constitution we have forms in our constitution it's like blanks to fill in your name and stuff like that for homework i mean in the constitution yeah so.

[Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz]

That can you know that can create some interesting dynamics and then we do of course have the problem of the fact that we've had several revisions to our constitution and then how much of the existing practice do you assume is sort of baked into things when they're revised and stuff and so i think a lot of you know at a sort of philosophical and methodological level i think a lot of the premises are the same but i think the implementation can be different and in some ways a little bit more challenging at the.

[Justice Evan Young]

State level and you had mentioned that sometimes the text of these state constitutions can be the same as in other states or the federal constitution and in texas we have a complete mix some of our provisions are word for word what the united states constitution is which allows for at least a premise or a buttable presumption that it was supposed to mean the same thing others we don't have a due process clause a lot of states have a due course of the law of the land clause our religion clauses are far more poetic and expansive than the first amendment our takings clause is dramatically different but historically i think in many states certainly in texas historically we've treated all of those the same and mostly said well they pretty much mean with the federal this takings clause completely different language but it must mean the same thing well one of the reasons is that over the past half century century so much law has been federalized that there wasn't that much work for states to do and doing the hard work of trying to generate independent meaning for state constitutions was sometimes not necessary because the feds were doing so much of it and sometimes very dangerous for the reasons that we were just describing you know if we try to give independent meaning to a state constitution and we botch it nobody can fix that except for the people of the state which is a hard process even when you have referenda even when you can have the legislature propose this to the people but that's why originalism is actually so important and it means that the states now have an obligation as a certain amount of authority is being restored to the state systems to get it right and to try to have people bring cases in which they really litigate and mine for text history tradition the original public meaning based upon the documents that we can find from that time and we're a good age for that methodologically a lot of lawyers a lot of lower courts are open to doing things that are systematic and consistent and reliable in ways that might not have really been true before.

[Sarah Isger]

Originalism in dc is pretty easy you have the home rule act and it's.

[Judge Josh Deahl]

Only about fifty years old originalism in dc is basically statutory interpretation and reading a statute from nineteen seventy three we have something called the home rule act that set up the district's basic structure of government we refer to it as kind of quasi constitutional it's like a charter and very little of the cases very few of the cases that come to my court really involve the home rule act it doesn't have a bill of rights or anything like that attached to it so unless you have some kind of challenge to the structure of government which we had one very recently we had an en banc sitting that we decided about a month ago that was about whether or not the district's anti slap act violated the home rule act because it had some procedures in it that arguably encroached on the court's rulemaking authority we said it didn't so we don't see it that often and when we see it what you do is you go to the committee reports from nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy two and you read through them and that's all there is to it there is not you know there was nothing like the federalist papers where different senators and congress members were writing you know theories about dc's self government saturday night.

[Sarah Isger]

Live starts in nineteen seventy five and is still on today like there's almost a tv show that we can trace from home rule forward some of the.

[Justice Evan Young]

People in this room were even in existence when the home rule that is.

[Judge Josh Deahl]

Correct and a lot of people in the district are you know it is it's novel in the sense that you know we don't we can't we have a local legislature called the dc council the mayor is the executive in the district but they don't have the power to amend the home rule act if somebody wants to amend our constitution and wants to it has to be the federal government it has to go through the house and they're they're trying to do that right now in fact largely with regard to how the district appoints its judges i feel like maybe i probably prompted that now that i got here everybody said this whole system seems seems wrong so there are efforts to amend the home rule act but we don't have any say against it you know the district's residents i am one of them as are my kids and my wife would prefer not to have i think generally would prefer not to have the federal government tinkering and being too involved with the district's government but you know your mileage may vary with that proposition and certainly some people's mileage in the current senate in the current house and in the current administration have differing views from for me about that and they're not going to listen they're not going to take my advice but.

[Sarah Isger]

Judge deal i'm going to stay with you because we're now going to move to the obligatory part of every twenty twenty five panel which is how is ai affecting your world i am a.

[Judge Josh Deahl]

Big proponent of at least the capability of ai improving and making courts work more efficient i teach a course at washington university law school on ai and the judiciary i will play around with ai a little bit in my job i had a case the case that we're hearing tomorrow it's unclear exactly how far the officers are from this guy when he runs and we have video of it it's all on body worn camera and i can see it and i kind of ask my clerk what's that fifty one hundred feet and eventually i clipped it and i put it into a chatbot and i said what do you think i kind of had it at seventy five feet i'd asked the chatbot and the chatbot was seventy five to one hundred feet and here's why these are two foot pavers and i count like twenty four pavers on the run and i was like that's actually excellent analysis that's really helpful and i think it happens to be right in this case now i think you have to approach it with a great deal of skepticism i mean i've had you know all manner of ai you know like just overtly lie to me and even after i catch it in the lie and say you know that case doesn't say that at all try again and it will just make up a different quote so that quote's not in the case either so you need to be aware of its shortcomings but in terms of how much data it can process like how much information it can take in and within a minute spit out what is often a pretty nicely written draft opinion or draft memo that you should be careful of its citations and you should be careful of what facts it's reciting because they might be wrong but it is really quite incredible what it can do and you know it's just getting better and better so i am bullish on its possibility that it can basically serve as an extra law clerk you know i'm already skeptical of what my law clerks give me i check everything in the record that they tell me and the cases and i don't mind doing that for a chatbot too but if the chatbot can do it in a couple minutes what it takes my clerks a couple weeks to do it can serve a.

[David French]

Very valuable function chief justice my question.

[Sarah Isger]

To you is about the rise we've seen in nuclear verdicts these ten million dollars plus verdicts what do you think is driving that what's the biggest change you've seen in the plaintiff side bar in the you know since you've been.

[Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz]

On the court you know i haven't really i don't really have any great insight on that i think a lot of the in terms of reform in florida i think there's been a lot of action on the legislative front there were some significant changes in insurance law that were made within the last couple of years that appear just from a policy perspective to have been accomplishing what was intended but i think from a litigation perspective there hasn't been enough time for it to bubble up to our court but i would say that that still and then hopefully some of the things that we've been doing in terms of helping get the sort of the machinery of the courts working more efficiently i think are probably the things that i've kind of been the closest to.

[Sarah Isger]

All right my question for you justice young is about what you wish the business docket folks understood about your job and particularly access to justice issues well.

[Justice Evan Young]

That'S a good i guess what i would say and it would be to really every audience but is that the judicial system of a state is one system and it may well be that you care about a particular slice of it and it's easy almost to imagine it i've described this as the statue from the book of daniel that had the feet of clay and it's easy to care about the golden head at the top but it turns out that if the base is made of clay the whole thing collapses and i say that because it's really important to me that all the people of texas at every level understand that it is one judiciary it belongs to the people of texas it is theirs the government of texas belongs to the people all three branches do in the same exact way they choose their judges to do different things then they choose the the members of the executive and legislative branches but we're theirs we belong to them to try to administer justice fairly and if the people of texas who mostly will see the judiciary in really miserable situations sometimes a criminal case most often family law cases if they do not believe that the judiciary of texas is able to expeditiously and efficiently and fairly hear them and resolve their disputes then they will lose confidence in the judiciary which means the judiciary will not be there to be able to do the things that people in the business world deeply care about which is why everyone should want the system as a whole to be strong everyone has an interest i should hope and i really think i think even more now than i did before in ensuring that confidence in the judiciary both that it is perceived as being good and that it actually is that both of those things matter at every level of the judicial process and if you want reform for one area the best thing you can really do is to make sure that the system is strong at the bottom and that no one is doubting that the judges of our state for example are able to do their jobs properly the business court was created in part because we would have massive urgent business cases filed in courts of general jurisdiction in some part of texas where that judge would have several counties and would have criminal cases criminal termination cases urgent cases about someone who has been confined for mental instability to institution all of these things pressing on that judge and then somebody comes says i have a massive issue about this merger that i would like you to enjoin well what in the world are they supposed to jettison and so it isn't just creating a new court to benefit a favored group by any means it's to protect the judges so that they can do the parts of their job that they really are there to do for the people in their communities that in texas elect them and allow the business court to be a pressure release valve too so it should be positive for everybody in the system not just creating a nice new wing of the judiciary for those people and when it all works together the whole thing gets better we do a much better job at having efficient pre trial administration our trials go better they generate fewer errors the appellate courts tend to be able to do their work more efficiently when the trial courts are able to do theirs and then the supreme court we can focus on articulating legal principles with maximum clarity which in turn makes it easier we hope for the trial courts and the lawyers of the state to be able to bring the right kinds of cases and make the right kind of arguments but if we have a weak judiciary in which the people either perceive or rightly think that the judiciary isn't capable of doing it the whole thing falters that's why access to justice actually is something that deeply matters to me and i think should matter to you and to everyone who might be watching this in every state and in the united states and.

[Sarah Isger]

I'Ll just make a plug for a previous podcast with chief judge of the fifth circuit jennifer elrod who came on to talk about the knowing failure to fund the program that allows for people to be represented mandatorily represented by counsel you know some states use public defenders some states use cja lawyers who are serve as appointed counsel and are therefore funded if we do not have funding for that this goes to your point it's very easy to not care pretty hard to get people worked up about criminal defendants but this is the point the whole system is a single system and i know judge deal you worked as a public defender for a long time and think very carefully about these.

[David French]

Things we'll be right back with more advisory opinions.

[Judge Josh Deahl]

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[David French]

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[Justice Evan Young]

Blinds dot com now for up to forty five percent off with minimum purchase plus a free professional measure rules and restrictions may apply you know we we.

[Judge Josh Deahl]

Do have a criminal justice act in dc we have a lot of cja what we call cj lawyers who handle a lot of the defense but the needs are you know we have right to appointed counsel in criminal cases obviously but the civil needs of individuals you know it's just impossible to meet even even in a town like dc where every other person you meet is a lawyer there aren't enough lawyers to go around there's all sorts of litigation needs and you know just to go back to a previous topic one thing that i've started to see and you know i think i've heard some colleagues on the trial court say complain about it a little bit is you are starting to see pro se litigants who are getting pretty savvy about using ai themselves i had an appeal not that long ago where somebody filed a brief and it was a really good pro se brief and he had left one of his prompts within the brief and the opposing side called him out and he said ah he's used ai in writing this brief you can see it that he left that prompt in and i was like thank goodness this is a great this is a great brief so far as a pro se brief goes so you know we have conferences and conferences about improving access to justice you know in landlord tenant cases that can be quite serious they have high stakes but most people are unrepresented oftentimes in family law cases they're unrepresented in various types of parental rights cases they're unrepresented and you know that's this is one potential additional release valve that might be coming if we learn legal service providers learn how to sort of harness ai or just individuals or platforms create ai that is you know it's not without its pitfalls it's got its perils it can lead to bad things if you're not careful with it but that is one other potential way to improve access to justice and in the district and.

[Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz]

Across the country i do think that is one thing that's interesting about the difference between the state courts and the federal courts and and i just hearing these judges talk i do feel like we're a lot closer to sort of the day to day things that people need access to the justice system for and there's a lot of accountability that comes with that i know that my colleagues and i are constantly thinking about you know some of these access to justice problems are almost intractable but there are things that you can do if you're responsible for governing the court system that can make it you know easier rather than harder and it's you know it's just sort of the kind of having the ownership in the administration of you know just the basics of people's interaction with the courts it's something that we you know that's a huge part of our job that's kind of you know not it's you know it's pretty separate really from the sort of deciding cases thing that most people associate with and i know that it takes up a lot of our sort of intellectual energy is kind of trying to think about what we can do on that.

[Sarah Isger]

Front sticking with you mister chief justice what is something that someone can do at oral argument to impress you candor.

[Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz]

Always impresses me you know just acknowledging acknowledging and i know this is kind of trite for coming from judges but just acknowledging that you're speaking to people who have to eventually make a decision and that you know especially at our courts by the time it's gotten there in our you know as i mentioned we have a lot of cases where it's because district courts are intermediate level courts have disagreed so smart people conscientious people have disagreed chances are this isn't you know a complete no brainer so anytime people sort of acknowledge what's difficult about the case and then help you know obviously they're advocating a person particular position so show us how we can consistently coherently responsibly get to the outcome that they're wanting us to adopt and you know just sort of admit the difficulty and embrace it and help help us you know resolve it obviously you expect them to want us to resolve it in their favor but basically put it in those terms for us justice.

[Sarah Isger]

Young why should someone clerk at the state supreme court rather than the federal.

[Justice Evan Young]

System well i don't know it has to be an either or but there's a lot of advantages that were certainly not presented to me when i was a law student the thought of clerking on the state supreme court was never suggested to me as a sensible idea never occurred to me to try to apply for it but turns out the texas supreme court we let our law clerk sit in on our conferences which is kind of crazy at a certain level but there's reason for and our conferences can last you know seven eight nine hours sometimes the law part and then we get to the administrative part where the clerks leave for when we're discussing the rules of procedure and judicial administration all the rest of it but just the law part can be you know six or seven hours and they're hearing the nine justices go around the table in every single case that we're deciding whether to grant how we you know regard to the oral argument that we heard the prior week how we think about the opinions that have been circulated what an extraordinary thing to have a year of hearing that every time there's a conference so from the perspective of a lawyer who wants to be a texas lawyer at least that's one heck of a turbocharge to being able to bring a matter of law type of perspective to practice understanding how it is that the supreme court of the state is likely to respond to a particular kind of argument that has been made or a particular kind of ruling that has been brought forth from from a lower court and then the state courts right now are in a kind of a renaissance i think we're doing things that state courts weren't really asked to do several decades ago i agree with the chief justice that it's always been the case that the state courts are the ones that have the closest touch to the people of their states one of the reasons why electing judges may not be the best system but it's not crazy these are the judges that are going to to actually be seeing these people in their courtrooms you have the domestic relations exception to federal jurisdiction federal judges don't get involved with that sort of thing and so if you're going to be in state practice having what he described as the always been true of state courts touch on the law that will affect most litigation and most people but now having the us supreme court giving authority to state states to try to resolve constitutional questions under their own constitutions means that you're learning things from people that will actually matter in high stakes cases as well as ordinary litigation i wish i could have gone back in time and clerked.

[Sarah Isger]

It my current court the conference thing is a big deal i would have.

[Justice Evan Young]

Paid my whole salary to have gone into one conference with justice scalia and that was not on offer you know.

[Sarah Isger]

All right judge deal last question to you i want you to take off your judge hat and hang out with me as your clerk sister in law and these two guys in between us they seem like nice smart guys right okay yeah they're okay at least why is it though that we keep hearing people again with these supreme us supreme court cases trying to finagle their way out of state courts if it's you know overseen by two such great guys as this you know i've tried to explain it to listeners before i think i have done a very poor job of that and so i'd like you to take a crack at explaining why so many people still want to be.

[Judge Josh Deahl]

In federal court so you know this is not a question i've really had to think about in my work my rough sense is that the premise at least is i assume defendant heavy usually it's the defendants who want to get out of the state courts i've sometimes worried about you know local jury pools local local counsel having it in with the judge and defendants usually being better resourced think they're going to get a fair shake in the federal court in dc i don't know that we see that that often you know if we're just having a chat as you know brother in law clerk sister in law you tell me i mean i'm not sure i'm not sure exactly what the phenomenon is so i mean i would have thought the phenomenon phenomenon was plaintiffs like being in state courts and defendants want to be why do the plaintiffs.

[Sarah Isger]

Want to be there is it the partisanship that these are elected judges and that people feel that and they think the federal system is therefore they're better credentialed they get smarter is it the resources question as you said the federal courts just have way fewer cases so you think you're going to get more attention from the smart people that can.

[Judge Josh Deahl]

Definitely be a big reason you know in dc we have you know a shrinking i think at least on my court shrinking backlog we don't have the terribly old cases that we once had but you can really languish in the superior court if you end up you know we're down ten judges on the superior court and so you've got dockets that are backed up by a couple years it can take you a long time to get to trial so i do think for institutional players who just you know one one fewer case to worry about that can be a big incentive to get out of certain state courts just kind of depending on what their backlog is to the contrary i think the ddc the federal district court in dc i don't think has anything like our local backlog so i think you'd be well advised if you wanted to make things go quickly to jump across the street are there other incentives i mean maybe local jury pools i don't know that the local jury pool is going to be any more favorable toward plaintiffs than the federal jury pool in dc that's the same jury pool i don't know about in some of the states i assume it's a broader district in the states and then part of it might just be biases you know people think oh those are better judges across the street that might have been i think that was probably more true you know thirty forty years ago i feel like a lot of the action is in state courts you know like justice like evan was saying my docket is super interesting we get great clerks we have law school professors who are telling law school students you know the real action right now especially if you're into criminal law which unless you really care about the armed career criminal act the supreme court is not doing much of interest to you we have a really interesting docket and so i think the judges have gotten better and better and you know i hope i hope litigants want to come to state court i hope they want to come through our courts they want to leave.

[Sarah Isger]

I can't stop them you notice i'm not going to ask the two guys who run for reelection that question i do want to take a quick couple questions from you guys and so listeners understand i am what is standing between them and a cocktail so we'll see what questions we get maybe they'll be very very short but if you have a question i think there is some microphone ish plan out there hopefully this.

[Blinds.com Sponsor]

Is not an inappropriate question for the panel but i want to follow up on the ai question defense counsel i've seen ai being used by the plaintiffs bar a lot recently and not just by pro se litigants by attorneys and i think the belief is that they can really do with impunity and if you're a diligent defense counsel no matter how frivolous it may be it's going to cost five figures at least to you know submit a brief addressing this and it gets withdrawn there's no sanctions and it goes on is there anything the courts can do about this to make sure that ai does not invite a flood of frivolous claims that distract from real meritorious litigation chief justice i'm.

[Sarah Isger]

Going to start with you on that.

[Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz]

One no i mean i think and i've been kind of trying to follow what other states do and i think texas and florida are both trying to take a fairly light regulatory touch right now on the theory that the existing tools for judges holding litigants accountable when they you know abuse the system or submit frivolous filings or whatever you know obviously i know that there's been a lot of attention to a given that aspect of it and the concerns with that i think that just in general bad behavior by lawyers it's tough to get judges to use the tools that they have so we've been talking about florida at the appellate court level at the trial court level judges are elected in florida and i know that that can create challenges for them if they're perceived as being too hard on lawyers or whatever but i really my sense is at least for now and i'm not a huge fan of ai just because i'm just sort of scared of technology and stuff like that and it just sort of the kind of you know inhumanity of it and everything sort of freaks me out but from a just from a kind of disciplining people who abuse it and everything our sense so far and it's something that we're looking at closely and our florida bar has been very actively looking at it but we don't really view it as anything that the existing sort of of tools that judges have can't handle so.

[Judge Josh Deahl]

If you're a fan of john grisham like myself two themes often emerge from his books one is wrongful conviction and then the other is his opposition to the election of supreme court judges so i'm curious your position on the latter where do you stand on the election versus the appointment of supreme court judges.

[Sarah Isger]

I'M going to give that to you justice young because i do think it's interesting you know i watch texas quite closely how many justices leave early so that it can be an appointed justice to replace them before the election there's very few just straight up elections for the supreme court in texas that don't have an incumbent in them which leads me to think that the justices themselves maybe don't think that a free for all election is a good idea well.

[Justice Evan Young]

It has happened i think right now maybe seven of the nine of us were initially appointed to the supreme court now that doesn't do a whole lot for you in the election other than it maybe makes it a little bit easier for you to get people's attention when you're campaigning because the primary ballot is just two names doesn't have a little i for incumbent but i don't.

[Sarah Isger]

Know that you would have run if it had just been an open seat were you really going to throw no absolutely not right so you don't get evan young's on the texas supreme court unless there's actually an appointment first that's.

[Justice Evan Young]

My point well and whether that's good or bad is something for the people of texas to decide in their wisdom but the you know the point i think you're making is well somebody's going to run for it and whether assume that i'm good and should stay well that doesn't make much difference if there's somebody else who has a better ballot name let's say and there are studies that are fascinating about the number of voters who go into the poll and they have all of these judges harris county texas has the longest ballot in the united states of america because of the number of judges we elect all of our trial judges and so we have all of these courts that no citizen can reasonably be expected to know in a primary imagine like which of these two names and so there are studies that show certain things like if there's a color in your name that's usually worth a couple of points if your name is an ordinary anglo saxon word like young that's worth a couple of points and i always say i'll take whatever i can get don't get me wrong but i'd much prefer if we're going to have an elected system for people to vote for me because they think i'd be a good judge well that's very difficult if there are one hundred judicial positions seventy i think is what it was in harris county last time plus all the other non judicial positions and so you know the supreme court is at the top but most people don't know the difference really between the supreme court and the court of appeals and the district court and the family court and all these different things that we have and so we are we're in a tough situation in terms of the people of texas demanding absolute control over who all their judges are and the people of texas demanding to know almost nothing about who any of their judges are and it's like being on two mountain peaks and trying to cross over on a rickety bridge if you're the candidate whether you're an incumbent or somebody else and so we have to campaign we do our best to try to educate people but there are thirty one million of us in texas so what would be a better system there are alternatives out there but the graveyard of judicial reform efforts in texas has many tombstones many many many tombstones because the people insist on maintaining their authority and so we've had some crazy experiences i wish we had a few more minutes i tell you some stories about former texas supreme court justices who've gotten elected because people thought they knew who they were based on their name and within a year they fled the united states for grenada having been indicted for serious crimes this is in nineteen seventy six you know it just.

[Sarah Isger]

Feels very texan honestly it's i mean.

[Justice Evan Young]

It'S sometimes truth is stranger than fiction but what's the alternative practically and then you know are we going to do something that's the people of texas are not going to accept i think a system in which we have a missouri plan option where you have a very small group sort of like what you have in the district of columbia i don't see that happening would they accept something in which maybe the governor gets to a point the senate confirms and then there's a retention effort in like in florida maybe but again there have been so many people that have tried to do that and that sounds to the texas strong populist tradition our eighteen seventy six constitution derives from that era you're just stealing power away from us and giving it to elite people and people don't like that even if it might make some sense so what i have concluded is that even though i don't love having to try to campaign you ask people for money imagine being a judge going out there and your your paw is outstretched hoping people put money in it so that you can you have no choice you have a state like ours with all these major media markets and you're trying to cut through all of the noise to get people to focus on you i don't love doing that but my view is until something fundamentally changes that's the system we have and so i'm glad that i had the chance to first be put on the court but i will keep i keep trying to run and i go around when i'm not on the ballot i spend a lot of time across the state trying to talk to people and explain to them why as the owners of the texas judiciary a third of the government of our state they have a civic obligation to learn something about the judiciary and make wise choices so that they can leave texas better off than they found it just like those who came before us have generally done and that's tough it's like the starfish story i can reach a few people here and a few people there and thirty one million of us but that's what i'm going to do i'm leaving it to others to decide whether or not there's something better that's above my pay grade it belongs to the people of texas he would.

[Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz]

Be a very hard person to beat i think in a fair fight you.

[Sarah Isger]

Know the thought i leave with on this is i think it's very hard to have the court do its any court any judge do their job which is often to be a counter majoritarian institution when standing for election and asking for money and having people not really know much about the role i want to thank the judges on this panel for coming here and talking about this as we've said on the podcast before the vast majority of law in this country that gets done is by state courts and yet we talk so infrequently about it so thank you guys for helping me do a little bit of correction on that balance thanks thank you.

[Judge Josh Deahl]

For having us you.

[David French]

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