in this video lecture we're going to talk about the Texas Judiciary the third branch of government Article Five in the Texas Constitution outlines the powers and limits of the Texas judicial branch but generally speaking the purpose of the Texas Judiciary and virtually any other Judiciary in a free and fair democracy is to interpret the laws and the Constitution and make sure that the laws and the way that those laws are enforced are consistent with the Constitution they're sort of keeping us on the legal constitutional train tracks to make sure the legislative branch and the executive branch are acting constitutionally so it's the Texas judicial Branch's job to interpret the laws and make sure that they're constitutional now this is a very complicated uh difficult task because there are multiple types of laws and so I want to go through a few baskets of types of law in the next few slides in this first basket we have the difference between Public Law which concerns the government meaning that the government is either the respondent or the petitioner in a given case either the government is bringing charges against somebody for having committed a crime or the government is defending itself against charges and so the government is involved in on one side of the case or the other either the legislative branch or the executive branch then on the other hand we have what's called private law which is a dispute between individuals this could be individual companies or individual people and the government merely plays the role of referee in sorting out that dispute the second basket of types of law here are the sort of cascading set of laws where one fits inside the next similar to these Russian nesting dolls which I'm sure you've seen before where you have the smallest one in the middle that has to fit inside all the sort of cascading corresponding um Russian nesting dolls as it gets larger so the largest Russi Russian nesting doll inside which everything else has to fit in uh the Texas Constitution is constitutional law so the Constitution serves as a framework for the Texas government just like the US Constitution serves as a framework for the federal government and everything else has to fit inside that Constitution and be consistent with it next is what's called statutory law which is the laws passed by the Legislative Branch statutory laws have to be consistent with the Constitution they can't um for example pass a law that says you're no longer allowed to criticize the governor or something like that that would not be constitutional and then finally you have what's called administrative law in the absence of specifics on how the executive branch is supposed to uh enforce law from the legislative branch the administ the uh uh executive branch makes up rules for itself um to get to the really nitty-gritty specifics on how to enforce some sort of a law and as long as those administrative laws are consistent with statutory law and the Constitution then that's totally fine but um they cannot step outside of both statutory law or constitutional law now this is a task that is very important for the um courts to weigh in on and it's a very difficult one um but it's the job of the courts to make sure that administrative law fits in St statutory law and statutory law fits inside constitutional law if we want to maintain this constitutional democracy and the final basket of types of law here are criminal and civil law criminal law is a kind of behavior code for a society that is enforced by law enforcement U officers and most criminal codes especially in Western democracies but even in authoritarian regimes look roughly the same you're not going to find a country where murder is legal or theft is legal um and uh so criminal codes tend to be generally pretty close to the same especially in Western democracies criminal codes in the United States can be divided into two subcategories based on severity uh felonies which are more severe crimes such as arson or murder or rape are um in this category of felonies and then misdemeanors which are the sort of lower level criminal offenses such as jaywalking petty theft these kinds of things um uh these are would be included in misdemeanors now there's all kinds of complexities to this for example there are classes of both felonies and misdemeanors um from class A all the way down to class D E F f um and there are also State felonies in every state as well as Federal felonies and state misdemeanors as well as Federal misdemeanors civil law on the other hand is a dispute between private parties that the government is going to sort out on those two people's behalf uh now this could include a dispute between two business partners to um divorced a divorce couple who wants to figure out alimony uh or custody battle with children there could be workplace negligence as long as that workplace negligence doesn't rise to criminal negligence but it's basically a uh dispute between private parties that the um law needs to sort out and now the since the punishment for criminal violations is much worse than the punishment for civil law you don't end up going to prison for violations of civil law um then the burden of proof for proving that someone committed a crime is much higher in criminal law as well so you have to have all 12 jurors unanimously voting that someone committed a crime in order for them to be con convicted of it whereas the bar is lower in civil courts this varies from court to court some the size of the jury varies the bar that you have to clear in order to um have you know been guilty of some civil violation whatever that may be um is different as well so the burden of proof is is different between these two uh and so that's an important detail to note uh also note that civil law uh say for example you are forced by the court to pay alimony in the case of a divorce and you decide not to pay that alimony this can then lead to a criminal charge so you can be charged with not following through with what the civil court told you to do and that can turn into a criminal law um but any case those are some difference important differences between these two types of law okay so there are some differences and some similarities in structure and function to between the Texas Courts and the US courts I'll start with the similarities both the Texas and US court systems have multiple layers to them uh so there's a district courts inter mediary courts and Supreme Courts in both cases and one reason why both court systems have multiple layers is to give defendants an opportunity to appeal a decision that they got in a lower court if you get a decision in a lower court that you don't like you have a guarantee of an appeal to the next layer and the US and Texas Courts have the same basic function which is to make sure that the law is enforced and that the behavior of the legislative and executive branches remain constitutional so this is the geographic boundaries of the federal court system which is three- tiered you see here each of these small little sections are a a district there are 94 of these districts and the second layer is What's called the appet courts each of these colored sections with the number associated with it is an appell at court and then you have one supreme court that manages the entire system similar to the US courts the Texas state courts are divided geographically as well you see here these little sections are the state district courts and then if you if you would like to appeal your decision in the state district courts you can appeal to the appeals courts which are these sections with the corresponding numbers and then at the very top there is a supreme court actually two Supreme Courts that deal with uh final decisions in the Texas court system however there are important differences between the US courts and the Texas Courts first the structure of the Texas Courts is much more complex than the US courts um for example the Texas Courts actually have two courts of final appeal um but the structure gets more complicated than that there are multiple layers not just three layers like in the US courts there are several layers that split off into strange uh directions whereas with the federal court system you really just have three layers US District Courts us circuit courts or US court of appeals and the Supreme Court at the very top so in contrast this is a map of the Texas Judicial System you have a completed PDF of this on your um canvas for this week you can already tell that there are while there are technically three layers you can see here um this is one big layer that is much more complex um you still have some much more complexity here and I'll talk briefly about this complexity okay so at the very bottom layer the green here are the trial courts of the Texas Judicial System the most granular of those courts are the municipal courts and the justice courts that deal with lesser in severity much more granular cases then those are uh may be appealed to the next layer which is the county level courts that are divided into three sections the Constitutional County Court the probate court and the county court at law as I said these bottom two sublayers deal with very granular um cases whereas much more serious state level cases including criminal cases start at the district courts the district courts are divided into two subcategories as well the district court and the criminal District Court One deals with civil cases mostly and the other deals with criminal cases if you don't like the decision you get from those um district courts and either the Civil or the criminal areas you can then appeal them to the intermediate or appell courts in the Texas Judicial System uh that deal with both criminal and civil cases the court of appeals AKA appell at courts deal 5050 with criminal and civil cases and then from there if the uh Court will allow you can appeal to one of two layers in the state Supreme Courts there are two Supreme Courts in the Texas Judicial System the first is the Texas Supreme Court that deals primarily with civil cases and sorts out constitutional disputes and the Court of Criminal Appeals which is the sort of criminal Supreme Court so all court cases that are of criminal nature from the court of appeals goes to the Court of Criminal Appeals and you can see here which uh types of cases are associated with which courts at this very bottom level the municipal and and Justice Courts deal primarily with Petty crimes um the county level courts deal with both criminal and civil cases the district courts deal primarily with with uh civil cases while the criminal district courts deal with criminal cases as the name suggests and as I said the court of appeals deals half and half with criminal and civil cases and the Texas Supreme Court deals exclusively with civil cases where the Court of Criminal Appeals deals exclusively with criminal cases in addition to complexity there is another important difference between the Texas and US courts in the United States courts judges are appointed by the president of the United States all up and down the hierarchy of Judges whereas in the Texas Courts judges are elected just like any other public office a judge will associate with Democrats or Republicans and will run a campaign just like any other elected office and try and win that office um many states have elected judges uh some states appoint their judges um but some states choose to elect their judges and so this um leads to an interesting discussion about whether or not we should in fact appoint uh judges or um we should be electing them what are what how are incentives changed when someone is appointed to a lifetime appointment versus when they get elected to a 2-year or four-year term and they're up for re-election does that change the incentive of Judges um that debate is still um being had to this day one very important component to the justice system are what are known as District Attorneys these are attorneys that essentially work in the government in the executive branch and uh act as the lawyers on behalf of the executive branch so in the case that the executive branch wants to bring charges against somebody for committing a crime the district attorneys are the the ones who are doing the work of actually arguing in the courts uh against who you know against whoever is being prosecuted in the case that the Texas government is sued for something maybe a violation of uh the Constitution it's the district attorneys who defend those cases now another difference similar to the judges in these with these District Attorneys is that in the US government District Attorneys are appointed by the president whereas and the Texas government District Attorneys are elected by voters in fact this is how this works in many states where District Attorneys are not appointed but are elected offices and again questions arise about whether or not this changes the incentives for the district attorneys to be impartial uh and as I said the goal of a district attorney is to prosecute and defend Texas State cases on behalf of the Texas government and again the executive branch uh in a democracy does not necessarily have an advantage over a defendant or over uh someone who is Prosecuting them because the independent Judiciary does not give uh favor favoritism to the uh uh government just because they are a part of the government the Judiciary is an independent part of the government that is under no obligation to rule on behalf of the state of Texas and by the way these District Attorneys deal in both criminal and civil cases at the Texas state level you might remember earlier in the class talking about how the Texas legislative branch has what's called the power of the purse in which they have control over the money they get to decide what the budget looks like in the Texas state government the executive branch has what's called the power of the sword the Texas state militia and police forces are located inside the executive branch and what's interesting about the judicial branch is that they actually have neither of these they do not have control over the money nor do they have control over any sort of police force that will enforce their rulings on their behalf and so the only teeth that the court system actually has to enforce its rulings is what's called judicial review judicial reviews The Power of a court at the local state or federal level to declare a law unconstitutional and overturn that law so this is essentially the power of a court to point at something that the legislative branch is doing or that the executive branch is doing and declare that action unconstitutional and throw it out this power exists in all courts across the country bear in mind that lower courts are subject to the rulings of the Court uh the layer above it and so on and all courts throughout the entire country and every state are subject to the rulings of the Supreme Court um and so that means this power itself came from a Supreme Court ruling in Marbury V Madison in 1803 where essentially the Supreme Court gave itself this power of judicial review arguing that it is not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution the US Constitution U but in order for the courts to have any power and any Independence this power must be um must exist and so um judicial review is a very important power that essentially gives any Court the power to um declare something unconstitutional and throw it out again like many Concepts in this class they seem simple on their face but once you really start digging in these things get a whole lot more complicated there are multiple ways to look at this power of judicial review uh and we can look at them through the lenses of the role of the court and then how that relates to their understanding of the Constitution given what judge is enforcing what judicial review when the first type of judicial review is called judicial restraint in which as the name suggests courts are supposed to mainly stay out of the way and let the other two branches of government make most of the decisions so letting the legislature pass laws and letting the executive branch enforce those laws and mostly staying out of the way uh and until a case is presented to them don't uh turn your job into a policy maker instead uh let the other two branches of government mostly do their work unfettered typically those judges who engage in judicial rest restraint view the Constitution through what is known as an original intent lens in which they are judging the constitution on the basis of the original intent of the framers instead of interpreting you know the argument is that if you are allowed to interpret the Constitution at your heart's desire you can interpret so much that you're way off the text and you're doing something that was not intended at all by the framers of the Constitution and so what we should be doing is tethering ourselves as closely as possible to the original intent of the people who wrote the Texas or us constitutions on the other hand there are what are called judicial activists judicial activism is another way to look at this concept of judicial review judicial activists view themselves as a co-equal branch of government and can insert themselves in the sort of um not quite the policymaking process but can do something for for the people in an event that the other two branches of government decide not to so for example Ro v Wade was considered to be a judicial activist ruling where since the state governments and the United States government are not going to provide this service of abortion at the uh uh from state to state the Supreme Court will jump in and say actually the country must do this um whereas a judicial restraint activists would say like this is not the job of the courts we should stay out of the way um another example of this might be the same-sex marriage ruling in Obel V hajes where the um judicial activist view that actually got the majority of votes said that the states uh must allow um samesex marriage licenses to be signed otherwise it's a violation of the Constitution whereas the judicial restraint people said not that they were against same-sex marriage but that the uh States should be making the this decision the elected parts of the government should be making this decision not the uh courts because in the US court system the courts are not elected judicial activists view the Constitution through a living Constitution lens they don't buy all this original intent stuff where you have to tether yourself so closely to the what the framers were thinking in order to be able to properly interpret it they think that the Constitution's interpretation should be changed as time goes on that the constitution especially the United States Constitution was written in such a way that leaves it open to interpretation on purpose so that it can be adapted to new uh circumstances so the people who drafted the Texas Constitution would know nothing about um you know same-sex marriage or what to do about um executive um uh Power when it comes to nuclear weapons or something like that and so the original intent people according to the judicial activists say that the um don't have an answer for what to do about when new problems arise and so living Constitution lens is supposed to look at the Constitution and adapt its interpretation as Society adapts and as time goes on there are a few limits of the Texas court system actually quite a few limits of the power of the Texas Courts the first is that enforcing rulings is a big problem for many courts again the power of the sword is vested in the executive branch the power of the purse is vested in the legislative branch the court systems have neither of these and so they rely on the other two branches of government to enforce their rulings you could imagine a circumstance where both branches of government really don't like the decision that the courts made even though that was an independent decision and decide not to enforce those rulings this is when you get into what's called a constitutional crisis um this is always a risk when a controversial uh Court ruling comes down so enforcing the rulings of the Supreme Court is one of their limits another limit is that if the Texas legislature decides to ratify an amendment to the Texas Constitution there is nothing that the courts can do so if the courts rule on some issue and then the legisl goes through the amendment process and ratifies the an amendment changes the Constitution there's nothing that the courts can do there's no such thing as an unconstitutional amendment to the Constitution uh and so this basically denudes the um Court of its power on those prior rulings the Texas legislature also creates the laws the uh and so therefore can be proactive when it comes to um uh creating laws and in the event that a Texas Court declares a Texas law unconstitutional then the legislature can just go back to the drawing board and redraft that law in a way that is uh that responds to that unconstitutional claim uh and they can keep doing that until the courts decide that it is indeed a constitutional law and then finally the Texas court system all from the very bottom to the very top are all subject to Supreme Court rulings and to federal court rulings but ultimately Supreme Court rulings and so the Texas legislature or the Texas judicial branch can make whatever rulings it wants but if the Supreme Court overrules them then the Texas Courts must comply and update their interpretation a couple of terms to finish up here that might be useful in Reading Court decisions so the Texas Supreme Court has seven members on it as you can see in a majority opinion which is the first term here imagine there's a ruling that uh was 4 to3 in favor of some the constitutionality of some new Supreme Court decision the majority opinion would be the majority of the court that voted in favor or against whatever ruling was made a concurring opinion is uh one of the four justices that voted in the majority who voted in the majority for some other additional reason so you might have one or two justices who agreed with the majority opinion of the court but had other things to say other reasons why they voted in the majority it's a concurring opinion and then finally you have a dissenting opinion amongst those uh seven justices the denters are the ones who dissented against the majority vote who voted against the majority and uh will often um um and have good reasons for why they de decided to desent in all of these cases the justices have the power to write a summary of why they made the decisions they made they are under no obligation to do so but um in the case of either a majority concurring or dissenting opinion the justices might write a an essay basically about why they made the decisions they did so that makes it clearer to the people why the ruling um shook out the way it did