Of the nine Republican justices who sit on the Texas Supreme Court, seven were first appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The incumbent is facing a challenge from Kristen Hawkins (no relation). A Democratic candidate, she currently sits on the 11th District Court in Houston. She is the better choice to serve on the Supreme Court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In any candidate who is running for one of the state\u2019s highest courts, we always hope to see a dignified and impartial demeanor, extensive judicial experience and a high level of legal knowledge and skill. Kristen Hawkins showed each of those qualities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
First elected to the 11th Judicial District in 2016, Kristen Hawkins has presided<\/a> over more than 200 trials, is board-certified in judicial administration and has been favorably rated in the Houston Bar poll.\u00a0<\/p>\n We also appreciate her attitude toward the role of partisanship in the courtroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t ever want anybody to come into court thinking, oh, she’s a Democrat, she’s going to rule this way,\u201d Kristen Hawkins said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Regarding her judicial philosophy, Kristen Hawkins said it starts with reading and applying the law as written, examining the facts of the case and determining whether the law fits those facts. But there is room, she said, to consider how the law might be applied differently in modern circumstances versus when it was written.\u00a0<\/p>\n This Editorial Board tends to support judges whose views lean further toward textualism. Everyone \u2014 private citizens or large corporations alike \u2014 should be able expect consistency from the state\u2019s highest appellate court.\u00a0<\/p>\n With that said, Kristen Hawkins still seems to us a better candidate than the incumbent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kyle Hawkins did not fill out our Voter Guide or respond to a request for an interview. We have only the available public record to judge him by, and there is not much out there.\u00a0<\/p>\n In an interview with Bloomberg Law, Kyle Hawkins said his job is \u201cuphold the rule of law by applying the law as written without fear or favor.\u201d He previously clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and worked as the Texas solicitor general.\u00a0<\/p>\n But what worries us is a prior career that reads as a resume in legal activism<\/a>. Kyle Hawkins spent a short stint working on the transition team for the Trump administration\u2019s Department of Justice last year. Since the president started his second term<\/a>, that office has been a laughingstock, its institutional knowledge and skill functionally destroyed. He also played a role in an effort to challenge the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Of the nine Republican justices who sit on the Texas Supreme Court, seven were first appointed by Gov.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-463650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}