Now We're Getting Somewhere
Several weeks ago, a post here on TXI Transportation v. Hughes (pdf) made mention of the fact that a majority of our current Supreme Court of Texas would not have had opportunity to serve at the time of that court's 1889 opinion, Moss v. Sanger, condemning appeals to racial animus in arguments to the jury.
Something just as cool happened this week. John Council of the Texas Lawyer Blog noted:
. . . Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson was traveling yesterday and could not be at oral arguments. So, by tradition, the most senior justice on the court took his spot in presiding over the first case on the docket. Since Justice Nathan Hecht, the high court’s longest- serving justice, recused himself from hearing TGS- NOPEC Geophysical Co. v. Susan Combs, et al., the job of presiding over the court fell to the next most senior justice, Harriet O’Neill. O’Neill says she didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a historic moment. A woman has not presided over the Texas Supreme Court since 1925, when Gov. Pat Neff appointed an all-woman court. . . .
But the really really cool part is that it happened as a matter of course and nobody noticed until after the fact. Justice Harriet O'Neill just happened to be the senior justice on duty, and she just did her job, as she has been doing since 1999. John Council quotes Justice O'Neill:
Isn’t that amazing? I didn’t even think about it,” . . . .
Now we're getting somewhere--when the "right thing" that used to be so hard to do or so exceptional or so controversial becomes so accepted that it happens without a thought. Nice.
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