Texas Legal Overview The highest court in Texas is the Texas Supreme Court, consisting of a chief justice and eight associate justices elected for 6-year terms. But the court of last resort for criminal cases is the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, based in the same building as the Supreme Court with a presiding judge and eight judges elected for 6-year terms. The intermediate appellate courts for civil cases are the courts of appeals, divided into 14 judicial districts. The 456 district courts are the main trial courts with general and original jurisdiction. Texas also has county, justice and municipal courts.
Top metro Texas areas for Legal Issues:
1. Capital punishment is legal in Texas, with the death penalty being administered by lethal injection. Cases originating in Texas have produced landmark judgments for controversial individual rights. In Roe v. Wade (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a woman's right to have an abortion, citing the right to privacy. The judgment struck down federal and state laws banning abortion, which is still legal despite numerous attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade. In Texas v. Johnson (1989), the court overturned prohibitions on desecrating the American flag. In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the court struck down the sodomy laws of 13 states. 2. An accident victim in Texas is spending considerable amounts of time to bring an end to texting while driving. 3. A deputy in Western Texas has been killed, and law enforcement officials have a suspect in custody.
Trending Texas Legal Topics: The Texas Bar Association State was established in 1882 as a voluntary organization. The state legislature established the unified State Bar of Texas (SBT) in 1939. SBT membership is compulsory for all of the lawyers licensed to practice law in Texas. The SBT now has more than 87,000 members. Bar exams and admissions are governed by the Texas Board of Law Examiners (BLE), which is judicial agency under the supervision of the Supreme Court of Texas. The SBT, BLE, the Supreme Court and all the administrative offices and agencies of the judiciary are based in Austin, TX. |