Nathan Hecht

Strongly Agree

Strongly Disagree

That phrase, which does not appear in the Constitution, properly means, as said in the First Amendment, that the government cannot choose to favor or establish a particular religion and cannot prohibit a person's free exercise of religion. The phrase certainly does not mean that people of faith are disqualified or prohibited from serving and participating in public affairs. The phrase is meant to protect religious liberty, not to diminish it.

Strongly Agree

Strongly Agree

I was raised by godly parents and grandparents on a family farm and gave my life to Jesus as a child. I have always been active in the Christian Church, never wavering in my faith, and have long been an elder, teacher, organist, and pianist.

Sam Alito

For years I have spent thousands of hours leading the Texas Supreme Court's efforts to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and state funding for legal services for hundreds of thousands of the very poor and vulnerable in our society, including veterans, victims of domestic violence, the elderly, children, and others. I have encouraged pro bono legal representation in the legal profession. I have also always been active in my church.

2012 Republican Primary, 2012 General Election, 2014 Republican Primary, 2014 General Election, 2016 Republican Primary, 2016 General Election, 2018 Republican Primary, 2018 General Election

Conservative

I think the most solid information is that I was first appointed to the district court by Gov. Bill Clements, and then 22 years later by Gov. Rick Perry. I have been elected to the Supreme Court 6 times, more than anyone in Texas history. Voters and others with many opportunities to examine every aspect of my record have repeatedly validated my qualifications.

I received my BA from Yale with honors in philosophy in 1971, and my JD cum laude from SMU in 1974. I was a Lieutenant in the UNSR JAGC from 1971-1978 and honorably discharged. I was an associate, then partner, in the Dallas Locke firm from 1976-1981. I was appointed to the 95th District Court in Dallas in 1981 by Gov. Bill Clements, and elected in 1982 and re-elected in 1984. I was elected to the Dallas Court of Appeals in 1986, and to the Supreme Court of Texas in 1988. In 2013 Gov. Rick Perry appointed me Chief Justice, and I won election in 2014. I am the longest serving member of the Supreme Court in Texas history, and am currently the longest serving state judge in Texas. I am president of the national Conference of Chief Justices and chair of the National Center for State Courts. For many years I have worked very hard to improve access to justice to the poor and people of modest means.

General business litigation and appellate law.

No.

I have devoted almost all of my professional life to judicial service. I have always been seen as a judge who carefully adheres to the text of the Constitution and laws. I have devoted much time and energy to help improve the access to justice and legal services by the very poor. I drawn strength for all my work from my faith.

I am deeply grateful to the people of Texas for the many years they have chosen me to serve them.

Strongly Disagree

Strongly Disagree

Brett Kavanaugh

The history of legislation is useful in understanding the background and context of legislation. Legislative history is different, consisting mostly of what individual legislators and others involved in the process said what they thought the legislation meant or what its purpose was. Legislators speak officially as a body and not with individual voices. SO legislative history cannot be used to show the meaning of the words the legislative body chose.

I have explained it this way in an opinion I wrote for the Texas Supreme Court: "We adhere to our precedents for reasons of efficiency, fairness, and legitimacy, and when adherence to a judicially-created rule of law no longer furthers these interests, and the general interest will suffer less by such departure, than from a strict adherence, we should not hesitate to depart from a prior holding. Upon no sound principle do we feel at liberty to perpetuate an error, into which either our predecessors or ourselves may have unadvisedly fallen, merely upon the ground of such erroneous decision having been previously rendered.”

One should look to the underlying convictions and values that the framers and ratifiers thought were too obvious to need to mention. For example, many courts have held that the right of parents to raise their children is of constitutional dimension, even though it is not mentioned specifically in the document. The right is fundamental to human existence. What a judge cannot do is try to make his or her own personal values into constitutional rights or imply them without support in the text or history.