This country was founded as an experiment in government for and by the people. The conceptual adhesive that makes that possible is the rule of law and the idea that the law that governs the people will be framed by popular consent. When judges "discover" rules in the constitution without any credible basis for their having been embraced by the people at ratification or elsewhere, that breaks down, the people and the other branches of government are written out of the picture. When the idea that the states should all allow that women the right vote become popular, no one raced to the supreme court to obtain a decree to that effect (though the equal protection clause could have been urged as a basis for it). Suffrage advocates petitioned to put the issue on the ballot in states across the country and secured popular support for an the 19th Amendment. Those who disagreed accepted their loss as the product of a constitutional and democratic process. The Roe decision was completely untethered to the constitutional text and violated the Ninth and Tenth Amendment. The Constitution is a written document--ink and words. If judges need to resort to emanations to get to a result, they're violating their oath in my view as well as the Constitution's assignment of authority to the people.

Strongly Disagree

I do not believe that such a "right" exists. Any such right must be created by law with accountability for the choose to create it falling either to the people directly (if by constitution) or legislators who would purport to create it by statute in the states. I do believe in the right to decline artificial means of prolonging life and to advance directives.

Strongly Agree

I agree. This includes all forms of state action from conception forward, including imposing death as a punishment for crime. I support the state's right to select death as a punishment and believe that the Constitution assures that any citizen facing such a prospect is entitled to due process, adequate counsel and, above all else, a judge who is fair and impartial as a matter of fact and objective appearance.

Strongly Agree

Strongly Agree

I wrote the amicus brief for the Texas State Rifle Association and 47 others in Heller and supported like efforts in McDonald and other major 2d amendment matters. I am a life member of the NRA and TSRA.

Legislative. All are critical, however. the judiciary was intended to be the most modest.

Follow the Constitution

At present, I would say Justice Alito. Recent past I'd say Scalia.

Yes, but there isn't a separation between "religion" and state. The Constitution assures that there will be no official state religion, meaning that Rhode Island cannot declare itself a branch of a particular faith. But state officials are not required to abandon their religious beliefs, whatever they maybe as a condition of service. The words "In God We Trust" can appear on currency, Moses can be depicted in the US Supreme Court, and the Ten Commandments can appear on the lawn at the Captiol.

Yes. By enforcing the Constitution(s) (state and federal) right to free exercise as augmented by state and federal statutory guarantees, like RFRA and RLUPA, as I did as a volunteer attorney for what was then First Liberty.

I think not. As I indicated above, the operative, relevant text of the Constitution has not changed or been amended by the people who are entitled to be governed by it since the civil war era. The idea that states were regulating and defining marriage was well known in the 1870s as was the concept of homosexuality. Nothing in the text presented to the voters for ratification would have alerted them to the idea that they were surrounding their authority to makes those decisions. Thus, I see the opinion as wrongly decided and as depriving the people of their right to be governed by state law and themselves in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.

Same as 4, but statutory

Strongly Agree

I've written numerous opinions on this during my time as an appellate justice. My record speaks for itself.

Follow the text. This is more difficult when the judge sits on a lower court and a directly superior court has held otherwise in applying the same text. If so, the question is whether the superior court considered and rejected the reading the lower court judge would follow. If that's the case, he or she is stuck and must follow, as a private would the orders of a superior officer, though he (unlike a soldier) can write separately to explain why the superior court should reconsider. If the precedent comes from any other source (a court of appeals in another part of the state, for instance) he or she might acknowledge it but is still obliged to follow the text. If the judge is sitting on a terminal court, then only its prior decisions have precedential effect. Again, where the court has previously directly considered and ruled improperly the judge should consider whether the court's decision has been embraced by the legislature as correct in the interim but otherwise follow text

When they are clearly wrong and particularly where they effect basic operations of government or amount to an over reach by the judicial branch itself.

Never

No

Integrity and courage are hard to differentiate when a judge is tested. Their indistinguishable in their effect when they're absent. A judge wanting to be popular or to please some master behind the curtains somewhere is a toxic vice.

Well, I think I showed that pretty clearly and repeatedly during my 8 years on the bench. Google: "Justice Schenck does not pull punches." I believe I consistently showed my willingness to stand my ground and to support my colleagues who were honestly doing the same whether they agreed with me or not. I was ready to rule for the plaintiff or defendant in civil matters and the state or the defendant in criminal matters wherever the law called for it and regardless of who they were. I regularly stood alone where necessary or to dissent over, for example, the right of Texans to express the opinion that abortion is murder, that hospitals should not be ordered by courts to provide their facilities for "gender care," or for criminal defendants to have the right to be treated with dignity, face jeopardy once, or of minors to be sent to adult capital system only with proof the judge read and considered the relevant evidence.

Highland Park Methodist, Grace Church (Plano) and Birth Choice

2014 Republican Primary 2014 General Election 2016 Republican Primary 2016 General Election 2018 Republican Primary 2018 General Election 2020 Republican Primary 2020 General Election 2022 Republican Primary 2022 General Election

No

No

Textualist, which makes me originalist. If one accepts the idea that the constitution is living, according to who is directing itself?

I am a Christian. I come from a family made up of multiple generations of pastors in the Methodist Church. I was confirmed in that church and remain an active member, though my wife and I began also to attend Grace Church in Plano during the pandemic. I believe that I have been save by grace, though neither I nor anyone else was deserving of it or of the cost in securing it. I do not think that any institution or form of government hostile to these ideas can survive. I readily acknowledge the wisdom of the framer's in the first amendment's assurance that no state religion would be imposed whilst simultaneously assuring the right to free exercise. But states and society's founded and operating without faith invariably fail.

This is an area where the state's role is (and should be) extremely limited and narrow--specifically to prevent imminent risk of serious injury. As reflected by my past legal work I don't believe the state has any right to appear in court to argue that children can be separated because of their exposure to religious beliefs. Likewise, as reflected by my opinions as a judge I believe the state has a heavy burden in terminating parents and hospitals shouldn't be "ordered" to provide "gender care"

Strongly Disagree

This is another area of politics (and bad politics at that) being rebranded and masqueraded as law; and, if accepted by judges, would result in a usurpation of the constitutional and democratic processes, breeding contempt for the judiciary and the rule of law in the process. The idea of a protected class

We are naturally prone to err and to sin. We are, however, creatures of free will and capable of making our own choices and are ultimately accountable for them. One of those choices is to accept our own failings and to ask for forgiveness. The human predilection toward self interest and aggrandizement was understood by the framers and is why they set up a government with three branches in two sovereigns (state and federal) and a system of checks and balances among them.

Strongly Disagree

I believe in the right to equal treatment under the law. Social engineering aimed at twisting that notion into a perpetual state of disparate treatment and grievance mining to distribute political power perverts that notion, undervalues the people it purports to aim to help, promotes discord and tribalism, and results in collapse if left to metastasize.