Opinion ID: 2829338
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: This Case Illustrates (Again) Our Abstruse Judicial “System.”

Text: “An artificial and arbitrary system, as age creeps on, gets hardened arteries.” 5 The history of Texas courts is indeed a sclerotic one. But all’s well that ends well, and even a helter-skelter judicial structure might be worth the strife if it still managed, despite itself, to produce efficiency. Ours hasn’t.
Like many things of Texas lore, the story of our court system begins with its size. During the colonization of Texas, judicial power was vested in the “municipal alcalde , an elected official who held executive, legislative and judicial duties,” 6 and Stephen F. Austin was himself the court of last resort. 7 After winning our independence, “Texas began with a unified judiciary system,” 8 and both the Republic of Texas and the early State had a single high court with both civil and criminal jurisdiction. 9 From statehood through Reconstruction, every appeal from a trial court went directly to the state’s Supreme Court, which at varying times had three or five members. 1 0 “Forty years and five constitutions later,” 1 1 and responding to this Court’s congested docket, the Constitution of 1876 created a three-judge court of appeals for criminal matters and limited this Court’s jurisdiction to civil matters. 1 2 The court of appeals, which despite its name was not an intermediate court, had final say in criminal appeals, and could also hear civil matters involving less than $1,000. 1 3 The flow of cases continued unabated, however, and in 1879, the Legislature fashioned another judicial Band-Aid with the creation of a Commission of Appeals. 1 4 But even doubling the number of commissioners provided scant docket relief, and in 1891 (just fifteen years after the Constitution was adopted), the citizens of Texas tried another approach, a massive overhaul that scrapped the entire Judiciary Article of the Constitution. 1 5 This kitchen-sink reform abolished the court of appeals and Commission of Appeals, gave criminal jurisdiction to a new Court of Criminal Appeals, and created three new intermediate courts of civil appeals 1 6 (in Galveston, Forth Worth, and Austin). 1 7 Our Court would maintain its civil-only docket and focus chiefly on resolving conflicts in the courts of appeals. 1 8 The Legislature was also charged with the task of dividing the state into judicial districts, each with its own court of civil appeals. 1 9 In 1913, this Court’s jurisdiction grew to include all cases from the courts of civil appeals, 2 0 and in 1980, a constitutional amendment bestowed criminal jurisdiction on the renamed courts of appeal. 2 1 Efforts to create a separate body of criminal-only intermediate courts were defeated. 2 2 So while the two highest courts in the state maintain specialized dockets, the feeder courts beneath them do not. Generally speaking, under our bifurcated structure, litigants file civil matters in the Supreme Court and criminal matters in the Court of Criminal Appeals. People frequently get misdirected, though—lawyers included—and the courts’ front offices regularly redirect lost litigants to the “other” high court. In fact, this Court’s clerk’s office has a stock letter it sends—every single day—to lost litigants, steering them to our sister court and noting that the Supreme Court “does not have jurisdiction over criminal cases” and “does not review the decisions of the Court of Criminal Appeals.” 2 3 Our dual high courts are largely meant to be co-equals—constitutional twins. This is anomalous among court systems, even in the only other two-court state, Oklahoma. Like Texas, Oklahoma has a Supreme Court that hears civil appeals and a Court of Criminal Appeals that hears criminal appeals. 2 4 But there are two key differences. First, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals is “subject to the power of the Legislature to change or abolish.” 2 5 Second, the Oklahoma Supreme Court is truly supreme; if there is a jurisdictional clash, the Supreme Court “shall determine which court has jurisdiction and such determination shall be final.” 2 6 In other words, there are two states in the nation with two courts of last resort. But only one state—the Lone Star State—has a non-supreme Supreme Court. 2 7
The convoluted make-up of the Texas judiciary—“one of the most complex in the United States, if not the world” 2 8 —does not lack for critics, from the litigants who endure it, the lawyers who navigate it, and the judges who lead it. In 1991, this Court’s appointed Citizens’ Commission on the Texas Judicial System reached a stark but unsurprising conclusion: “Texas has no uniform judicial framework to guarantee the just, prompt and efficient disposition of a litigant’s complaint. . . . With the passage of time, the organization of the courts has become more, not less cumbersome.” 2 9 That critique mirrors one that same year from the Texas Research League (“TRL”), which former Chief Justice Phillips had asked to scrutinize our judicial structure and suggest concrete improvements. The system’s mind-numbing complexity led TRL to lament in May 1991 that the Texas judiciary was in “disarray” and “ill-equipped to meet the needs of the 21st century,” adding, “Texas does not have a court system in the real sense of the word.” 3 0 Indeed, “assigning the appellation ‘system’ to our state courts might require a long stretch of the imagination.” 3 1 Nothing has improved, and interestingly, the most strenuous critics, it seems, are those who know the system best: the judges. First, trial courts . “Texas has some 3,241 trial courts within its 268,580 square miles.” 3 2 The complexity at the lower-court level is dizzying, as the attached chart (meant to simplify things) illustrates. 3 3 In his 2007 State of the Judiciary address, Chief Justice Jefferson urged the Legislature to modernize our patchwork trial-court system, calling on lawmakers to start “examining whether Texans are best served by the current (and often redundant) complex system of county courts at law, district courts and statutory probate courts, or whether streamlining some of these courts may create a simpler system.” 3 4 Three members of this Court recently branded our jurisdictional mishmash “unimaginably abstruse,” a tangle that has “gone from elaborate to Byzantine.” 3 5 A former member of this Court politely called our system “the opposite of a coordinated judiciary.” 3 6 One former state appellate judge bemoaned our “maze of jurisdiction and procedure” that “[o] nly a puzzle-maker could appreciate.” 3 7 In 1993, the Court-appointed Citizens’ Commission on the Texas Judicial System commented that “[n]o one person understands or can hope to understand all the nuances and intricacies of Texas’ thousands of trial courts.” 3 8 Yet another report bemoaned that “current judicial districts are so fundamentally unfair and so irrationally configured as to shock the conscience of all Texans who familiarize themselves with the present system.” 3 9 This long-derided irrationality persists. As one might imagine, our bizarre structure has generated some fanciful factoids—practical problems and offbeat jurisdictional oddities that clog the everyday inner workings of our judiciary. Consider: • Texas has at least nine different types of trial courts, “although that number does not even hint at the complexities of the constitutional provisions and statutes that delineate jurisdiction of those courts.” 4 0 Whether a given trial court has jurisdiction is a five-step inquiry. 4 1 • As Chief Justice Jefferson has pointed out: “Some counties share a multi-county district court, while others have multiple districts within the county. And some counties are part of more than one district, creating a shifting target for litigants who may not know which court’s rules prevail. Overlapping geographical jurisdiction creates confusion for litigants and increases the risk of conflicting rulings in a single area.” 4 2 • At least one county court has no civil jurisdiction whatsoever. 4 3 • Only eight percent of Texas’s justices of the peace are lawyers, even though they can hear cases involving multimillion-dollar claims. 4 4 • A civil suit that would be tried before a twelve-person jury in district court would be tried before a six-person jury if filed in a county court. 4 5 • District court vacancies are filled by appointment by the Governor 4 6 but statutory county court vacancies are filled by appointment by the county commissioners, even though those courts frequently have jurisdiction over the same matters. 4 7 • Whether there is a minimum monetary limit on the State’s district court jurisdiction actually remains an open question. 4 8 While the Constitution has been amended to eliminate a monetary minimum, there is some argument that it is still implied. 4 9 • Generally, jurisdictional limits on statutory county courts range widely by county—from $500 to $100 ,000 5 0 —and some such courts have no monetary limits at all. 5 1 • “Appellate rights can vary depending on which court a case is filed in, even among trial courts with concurrent jurisdiction, and even when the same judge in the same courtroom presides over two distinct courts.” 5 2 Second, intermediate appellate courts . Texas is the only state in the nation in which trial judges answer to more than one intermediate appellate court; 5 3 that is, no other state has overlapping appellate jurisdictions. 5 4 Fifteen counties are in overlapping districts. 5 5 This Court has lamented the “manifest” problems inherent in overlapping districts: “uncertainty from conflicting legal authority,” “the potential for unfair forum shopping,” and “jurisdictional conflicts.” 5 6 In fact, the two Houston-based courts of appeals have even reached polar-opposite outcomes on the same facts 5 7 —allowing three passengers in a car accident to sue but not the fourth. 5 8 The following year, in 2002, we exhorted the Legislature that “[n]o county should be in more than one appellate district.” 5 9 I suspect we will do so again next year when we issue our required plan to the Legislature on whether any appellate courts should be added, eliminated, consolidated, or reallocated. 6 0 The Attorney General’s current chief legal counsel recently bemoaned problems inherent in our overlapping intermediate-court structure: “Much of the problem—and most of the opportunity for reform—lies in the antiquated structure of the lower courts”; 6 1 likewise, our appellate courts “are struggling to overcome a structure ill-suited to modern caseloads.” 6 2 Created to ease high-court docket congestion, our “heavily fractured intermediate court structure,” if anything, has created a system “more primed for generating conflicts” than any other state in the nation. 6 3 Third, courts of last resort . Coy Reece’s case is but one more cautionary Texas tale. As it illustrates, our dichotomized system invites inter-court confusion, and as Texas history shows, inter-court clashes. The Citizens’ Commission report from 1993 noted that conflicts between the dual courts have arisen over the conclusivity of the courts of appeals’ factual determinations, the constitutionality of the “Pool Hall Law,” and whether journals of the House and Senate can be used to contradict an enrolled bill. 6 4 In fact, members of the two courts have themselves sometimes highlighted the friction that occasionally befalls a bifurcated system. A Court of Criminal Appeals judge once lamented the split-system’s tendency to shuffle parties needlessly about as he sent an “appellant on his way to begin yet another search for the proper forum.” 6 5 In another case, three members stated that they were “concerned that this State’s bifurcated judicial process could sometimes generate conflicting decisions at the highest level on identical questions of law . . . . If there is a problem, it lies with the lines dividing the constitutional jurisdiction of this Court and the Texas Supreme Court.” 6 6 The Texas system’s decentralized nature has been blamed for a “lack of coordination” 6 7 that is apparent here. Even the Office of the Attorney General—“the law firm of Texas” itself—is not wholly immune from the jurisdictional confusion. In 1992, the Attorney General’s Office took the rare step of appealing a lower-court ruling striking down the State’s anti-sodomy law to both courts because, as the lead attorney explained, “We want to make sure we’re not locked out of an appeal. It was either file with both or roll the dice.” 6 8 The Court of Criminal Appeals declined jurisdiction , 6 9 and this Court eventually ruled that it too had no jurisdiction. 7 0 The (non)decision was roundly criticized. One might wonder, as did an editorial board, “What’s the point of having not one, but two final state appellate courts if neither of them has the authority to rule on the constitutionality of a Texas criminal statute?” 7 1 Lawyers ought not be forced to litigate “on a guess and a gamble.” 7 2 Up north in Oklahoma, that Supreme Court could decide this jurisdictional quandary swiftly. Not so here, though one court-reform study, mindful of the potential for jurisdictional confusion, proposed a Sooner-like solution whereby “the supreme court should determine which court has jurisdiction, and those determinations should be final.” 7 3
The urgency of sweeping judicial reorganization was “a perennial theme” 7 4 throughout the twentieth century. Earnest reformers like Roscoe Pound 7 5 and blue-ribbon studies galore urged a sweeping restructuring of our hodgepodge judiciary. Throughout the 1900s, “in virtually every decade of [the] century,” 7 6 there were regular calls in the Legislature, the academy, and the profession for structural reforms at every level, including high-court merger. 7 7 There have been periodic small-bore reforms, yet even those piecemeal tweaks were “inexorably tedious and protracted”; 7 8 ad hoc is the rule—evolutionary rather than revolutionary. The 1970s were particularly reform-minded. The Judicial Section of the State Bar of Texas pushed for substantial changes to our judicial structure during the 1971 legislative session. 7 9 That same year, the Legislature proposed a constitutional amendment, eventually adopted by voters in 1972, directing the Legislature to form a Constitutional Revision Commission to “study the need for constitutional change” and then convene in 1974 as a constitutional convention. 8 0 Also that same year, in October 1971, then-Chief Justice Calvert formed the Chief Justice’s Task Force for Court Improvement to rewrite Article V, the Judiciary Article of the Texas Constitution. In September 1972 the Task Force proposed, among other things, simplifying the trial-court maze, investing the courts of civil appeals with criminal jurisdiction (which happily happened in 1980), reforming judicial selection, and merging our twin high courts. 8 1 The Calvert Task Force coincided with a court-reorganization report by the House Judiciary Committee, which in 1972 called for extensive changes in the judicial branch. 8 2 In early 1973, the thirty-seven members of the Texas Constitutional Revision Commission began nine months of study and public hearings, culminating in a proposed new state constitution. 8 3 (The Revision Commission was chaired by then- former Chief Justice Calvert, who had left the Court the previous October, one month after his Task Force unveiled its proposed Judiciary Article). Essentially, the Calvert-led Revision Commission adopted the recommendations of the Calvert-led Task Force. 8 4 Notably, though, the Revision Commission, unlike the Task Force, wrestled with modernizing the entire Texas Constitution, not just Article V. And the document it presented to the Legislature in November 1973 was the first comprehensive effort to draft a new constitution for Texas since the Constitutional Convention of 1875. 8 5 The following January, the Legislature convened unicamerally in the House chamber as the Constitutional Convention of 1974. Like the Revision Commission, the Constitutional Convention favored a wholesale overhaul of the entire Constitution, and many of the proposed reforms, especially a right-to-work provision, provoked raucous debate. 8 6 The Convention dissolved seven months later, falling three votes shy of submitting a new constitution to Texas voters. 8 7 That October, the House Judiciary Committee submitted a report calling on the Legislature to submit to voters the revision of Article V that the 1974 Constitutional Convention considered. 8 8 The Legislature reconvened in January 1975, and this time, acting as a regular legislature and not as a constitutional convention, it approved what became a package of eight separate amendments, including a new Article V, which resurrected the recommendations for a combined high court, courts of appeals with both civil and criminal jurisdiction, and substantial trial-court unification. 8 9 For the first time in a century, Texans had an opportunity to consider a revised constitution. It was not to be. As in the Constitutional Convention the previous year, fierce opposition arose over various non-judiciary proposals (like annual legislative sessions, a right-to-work provision, and taxation and education reforms) and each and every proposed revision was defeated, including the modernized Article V (which received more votes than any other amendment). 9 0 A 1976 interim study of the House Judiciary Committee submitted fifteen piecemeal recommendations, 9 1 six of which the Legislature enacted (like the creation of the Office of Court Administration). 9 2 In 1979, then-Chief Justice Greenhill championed in his State of the Judiciary address the rifle-shot reform of giving criminal jurisdiction to the courts of civil appeals, 9 3 and voters agreed in 1980. 9 4 The call for broader reforms persisted throughout the 1990s—from TRL, 9 5 to the Comptroller, 9 6 to the Court-appointed Citizens’ Commission. 9 7 In May 1991, TRL urged a totally new Judicial Article, saying our courts are so “fragmented” that “[t]he Texas court system really is not a system at all.” 9 8 In 1991, we directed an eighty-four-member Citizens’ Commission on the Texas Judicial System to “study and recommend any necessary or desirable improvements in the courts of Texas.” 9 9 Given our constitutional responsibility “for the efficient administration of the judicial branch,” 10 0 the Court invited common-sense reforms, predominantly those related to the “jurisdiction and title of the trial and appellate courts of Texas.” 10 1 Believing “a sound organizational and administrative structure is essential to a well-regarded judiciary,” the Commission proposed a system that simplified general-jurisdiction trial courts and unified our dual high courts, though the new Supreme Court would have “two divisions, civil and criminal, each with seven justices.” 10 2 In the 1990s, the Citizens’ Commission proposals did draw support as part of broader efforts to streamline our ungainly constitution down to something approaching comprehensibility. 10 3 No such luck; the efforts sputtered. Our unwieldy constitution lives, including our crazy-quilt court system, a top-to-bottom mess. The push for modernization has continued apace in the 2000s. Many observers, including members of this Court , 10 4 have continued pushing for lower-court simplification, and other voices urge high-court merger as part of a broader restructuring. 10 5 Against this bizarre background I turn to Reece’s petition for writ of habeas corpus. It determines the procedural posture that so interestingly animates this case, and channels the kinds of cases this Court can and cannot hear. The issue of jurisdiction—deciding to decide—may sound like a meta-interest floating in the jurisprudential ether, but its importance as a threshold issue cannot be overstated. The matter of to whom the courts are open—and for which claims—colors our bifurcated high-court system, and ultimately disposes of this case. Sections II and III discuss, respectively, the statutory and precedential evidence that suggests we are not permitted by law to hear this case. Section IV explains that even if we do maintain jurisdiction, it would be unwise to exercise it. The former is a matter of a legal directive, the latter a matter of judicial discretion, but both yield the same conclusion: There is no compelling case to hear this case.