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![handle is hein.journals/hlreoffrec17 and id is 1 raw text is:
ARTICLE
WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON, JUDGE, OURS OR
THEIRS? JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE IN A
RIVEN CIVITAS
Nathan L. Hecht*
Thank you, Dean Baynes, for that wonderful introduction and
for your invitation to share my thoughts this afternoon on judicial
independence, especially at present in our divided body politic-as
I say, a riven civitas.
I'm honored to be at the University of Houston Law Center
today as the Sondock Jurist in Residence and to deliver this Son-
dock Lecture in the presence of the revered Justice Sondock her-
self, a dear friend, along with Business Court Judge Sofia Adrogu6,
Business Court Judge Grant Dorfman, and Texas 14th Court of Ap-
peals Justice Ken Wise.
We elect judges in Texas, of course-1,959 of them at last
count, excluding 1,243 municipal court judges1-and in partisan
elections. I have long thought that partisan election is among the
very worst methods of judicial selection as I said in my 2019 State
of the Judiciary Address to the Texas Legislature.2 [W]hen
* Partner, Jackson Walker LLP, and formerly the 27th Chief Justice of the Su-
preme Court of Texas. I served 36 years as a member of the Court, longer than anyone in
history. I was first elected to Place 6 on the Court in 1989, succeeding Justice Ruby Mess
Sondock, who had served in Place 6 in 1982. This article is an extension of my remarks at
the 2026 Justice Ruby Mess Sondock Lectureship in Legal Ethics, which rely in part on my
Brennan Lecture at New York University in 2019. Nathan L. Hecht, Judicial Independence:
Threats from Without and Within, 94 N.Y.U L. REV. 1057 (2019) [hereinafter Hecht Judicial
Independence]. I want to thank James Donovan, Chief Editor, Houston Law Review Online.
1. See Court Structure of Texas December 2025, TEX. JUD. BRANCH,
https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1461638/court-structure-chart-dec-2025.pdf [https://
perma.cc/S2LP-3K72] (last visited July 30, 2026).
2. Nathan L. Hecht, The STATE OF THE JUDCIARY in Texas: An Address to the
86th Texas Legislature (Feb. 6, 2019), http://www.txcourts.gov/media/1443500/soj2019.pdf
[https://perma.cc/9N66-X57J].
1](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/hlreoffrec17&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)