Court Opinion

ID: 9667669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:51:53.268696+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:39.737671
License: Public Domain

PER CURIAM CONCURRING OPINION
We write separately to express our disagreement with those observations in Justice Doggett’s concurring opinion regarding the delay in disposing of this matter.
Certainly this case has pended longer in this Court than most of our causes. If the two concurring justices had, in lamenting this fact, addressed their remarks to the Court collectively, we would lodge no complaint. But the charges of the two concurring justices are leveled not at the Court as a body, but at the author of the Court’s opinion and all who join in it. Reluctantly, we are compelled to respond.
The opinions of this Court, although generally signed by one justice, are not infrequently a collective product. See Edge-wood Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Kirby, 804 S.W.2d 491, 501 (Tex.1991) (Doggett, J., dissenting on motion for rehearing). We all bear responsibility for both the quality and pace of our Court’s work product. That truth is recognized in the internal rules governing our Court, with which Justice Doggett surely agrees. See Amberboy v. Societe de Banque Privee, 831 S.W.2d 793, 798 (Tex.1992) (Doggett, J., dissenting). Pursuant to those rules, each of us had more than one year to assume responsibility for drafting a proposed opinion in this matter. As all nine justices agreed with the result in this case, it is unfair to assign fault for delay to some, but not other, justices.
Justice Doggett’s further remarks about delay in other matters are even more unfortunate. Because the “discussions, votes, positions taken, and writings” of the Court are confidences shielded by law from contemporaneous or subsequent disclosure, Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 3(A)(6), those of us who bear these attacks cannot ethically make, and should not offer, public factual response. If such charges are true, they should be pursued in the appropriate forum provided by the Constitution and laws of the State.
Each of us was chosen by the people of Texas to pursue the common goal of justice, both in the resolution of cases brought before us and the efficient administration of the judicial branch of government. Tex. Const, art. V, §§ 3, 31. To assist in realizing our purpose, this institution, like other deliberative bodies, has developed traditions which engender mutual tolerance and respect and enable its members to work together to accomplish their required tasks.
*65These traditions wisely counsel civility and fairness in our opinions. As Chief Justice Warren Burger has stated:
With passing time, I am developing a deep conviction as to the necessity for civility if we are to keep the jungle from closing in on us and taking over all that the human hand and brain has created in thousands of years by way of rational discourse and in deliberative processes ....
WaRren E. BurgeR, Delivery of Justice 173 (1990) (from remarks before the American Law Institute in 1971). In leveling accusations against members of the Court to which they cannot ethically respond, the concurring opinion assaults these traditions, violating the spirit of professionalism which we endorsed in the Texas Lawyer’s Creed — A Mandate for Professionalism (adopted November 7, 1989), which states: “Lawyers and judges are equally responsible to protect the dignity and independence of the Court and the profession.”
If our established practices break down, the losers will be the law we are sworn to uphold and the people of Texas we are privileged to serve. Thus, while we regret filing this opinion, we regret even more the action which we feel made it necessary.