Don Willett

Don R. Willett (born July 16, 1966) is a Justice on the Supreme Court of Texas. He was appointed by Governor Rick Perry on August 24, 2005, to fill the vacancy created when former Justice Priscilla Owen joined the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Willett was elected on November 7, 2006, and re-elected on November 6, 2012, to a six-year term that ends December 31, 2018.

Background and personal life

A native Texan, Willett was born and reared in Talty in Kaufman County. His father died at the age of forty, when Willett was six, and he and his older sister (Donny and Donna) were reared by their mother, Doris, who waited tables to support the family. Neither of Willett’s parents finished high school. Willett attended public schools in Forney in Kaufman County, having graduated in 1984, and then became his family’s first college graduate.

Willett received a triple-major BBA (economics, finance, public administration) from Baylor University in 1988. While at Baylor, he was a member of the Baylor Chamber of Commerce. He received his Juris Doctor with honors, along with an A.M. in political science, from Duke University in 1992.

Supreme court

A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of many legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, instance court, judgment court, apex court, and highest court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of a supreme court are not subject to further review by any other court. Supreme courts typically function primarily as appellate courts, hearing appeals from decisions of lower trial courts, or from intermediate-level appellate courts.

However, not all highest courts are named as such. Civil law states do not tend to have singular highest courts. Additionally, the highest court in some jurisdictions is not named the "Supreme Court", for example, the High Court of Australia; this is because decisions by the High Court could formerly be appealed to the Privy Council. On the other hand, in some places the court named the "Supreme Court" is not in fact the highest court; examples include the New York Supreme Court, the Supreme Courts of several Canadian provinces/territories and the former Supreme Court of Judicature of England and Wales, which are all superseded by higher Courts of Appeal.

Supreme Court of Texas

The Supreme Court of Texas is the court of last resort for civil matters (including juvenile delinquency which the law considers to be a civil matter and not criminal) in the state of Texas. A different court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, is the court of last resort for criminal matters in the State of Texas.

The Court is composed of a Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices. The Court meets in Downtown Austin, Texas in a building located on the state Capitol grounds, behind the Texas State Capitol.

Regulation of the legal profession in Texas

By statute, the Texas Supreme Court has administrative control over the State Bar of Texas, an agency of the judiciary. The Texas Supreme Court has the sole authority to license attorneys in Texas, and also appoints the members of the Board of Law Examiners which, under instructions of the Supreme Court, administers the Texas bar examination.

Justices of the Court

The Court has a Chief Justice and eight associate justices. Each member of the Court must be at least 35 years of age, a citizen of Texas, licensed to practice law in Texas, and must have practiced law (or have been a lawyer and a judge of a court of record together) for at least ten years. The Clerk of the Court is appointed by the Justices and serves a four-year term.

Justice

Justice, is a concept whose content several times has been subject to a philosophical as well as legal treatment. There is no universal definition of the term. In its most basic form, "justice" is the systematized administration of punishment and reward. Further to this, one can say that justice excludes randomness. The concept of justice is based on numerous fields, and many differing viewpoints and perspectives including the concepts of moral correctness based on law, equity, ethics, rationality, religion, and fairness. Often, the general discussion of justice is divided into the realm of societal justice as found in philosophy, theology and religion, and procedural justice as found in the study and application of the law.

Texas

Texas /ˈtɛksəs/ (Spanish: Texas or Tejas [ˈtexas]) is a state in the United States of America. It is the second most populous and second largest state by area in the US. Geographically located in the south central part of the country, Texas shares an international border with Mexico to the south and borders the states of New Mexico to the west, Oklahoma to the north, Arkansas to the northeast, and Louisiana to the east. Texas has an area of 268,820 square miles (696,200 km²) and a growing population of over 27.5 million residents (July 2015).

Houston is the largest city in Texas and the fourth-largest in the United States, while San Antonio is the second largest in the state and seventh largest in the United States. Dallas–Fort Worth and Greater Houston are the fourth and fifth largest United States metropolitan statistical areas, respectively. Other major cities include Austin (the state capital) and El Paso. Texas is nicknamed the Lone Star State to signify Texas as a former independent republic, and as a reminder of the state's struggle for independence from Mexico. The "Lone Star" can be found on the Texan state flag and on the Texan state seal. The origin of the state name, Texas, is from the word, "Tejas", which means 'friends' in the Caddo language.