[ Report Home | Previous Page | Next Page ] Pay to Play IV. The Appeals Process

The Texas Supreme Court is the court of last resort for state civil disputes. It has jurisdiction to review questions of law that arise in lower state courts. The court has broad discretion to accept any matter that involves any one of the following six conditions:⁶

1. A constitutional issue;

 
2. Questions about the construction or validity of a statute;

 
3. Conflicting rulings by two appellate courts on an important point of law;

 
4. Disagreements among justices of the same appeals court on an important point of law;

 
5. A court of appeals committing an important error of law; or

 
6. A court of appeals deciding an important question of state law that should be resolved by the Supreme Court.

In September 1997, the court changed the rules governing the chief route that litigants use to appeal an issue to the high court.⁷  Under the old system, the chief way that litigants attempted to get the court to review a legal issue was to file lengthy “applications for writ of error.” These applications have now been replaced by shorter “petitions for review.”

Previously, the court randomly assigned applications for writ of error to one of the nine justices. Typically, that justice’s staff attorney or clerk would review the application and accompanying briefs and draft a recommendation to the full court on whether or not the court should accept the case. Under that system, the other eight justices did not see the accompanying briefs unless they specifically requested them. Under the new system, the staff of each justice gets a copy of every petition for review. Under both systems, individual justices then cast votes on whether or not to accept a case. The court declines to review any matter that fails to garner the support of at least four justices. The court keeps these deliberations and votes confidential; its rejections require no explanation.

In accepting a petition, the court is not signaling that it intends to ultimately rule in the petitioner’s favor. The court is, however, granting the petitioner an extraordinary chance to present his or her case in the Texas Supreme Court. The vast majority of petitioners never get this opportunity.