A look at the governor's power to appoint members to the Texas courts - especially the Texas Supreme Court.
- For a look at recent appointments, click here.
- Here is the retirement that made this possible.
- Click here for the article.
In the past three months, Gov. Greg Abbott’s appointments have included a new director of the Office of State-Federal Relations, a new chair of the Family and Protective Services Council, three Parks and Wildlife commissioners, several appellate court justices and two members of the Texas State Board of Acupuncture Examiners.
But in the months since Texas Supreme Court Justice Phil Johnson announced his retirement, Abbott has not named a successor to fill the vacancy on the state’s highest civil court. Friday marks three months since Johnson announced — just days after a slew of lower-court Republican justices lost their elections to Democrats in big city districts — that he would retire, effective Dec. 31, after 13 years on the high court’s bench.
That vacancy leaves the all-Republican court liable to split 4–4 — an impasse that might require the governor to appoint an interim judge as tiebreaker — and, perhaps more significantly, adds to the hefty workload of the eight justices sitting on the bench. Operating one member down could make it more difficult for the high court to clear its docket by the unofficial end-of-June deadline, a productivity marker that has been a priority for Chief Justice Nathan Hecht.
Hecht said the vacancy has yet to hurt the court’s workflow, though “eventually it might.” It’s not the first time the court has been down a justice, he noted, and Johnson worked to get out several opinions before retiring last year.
