Biography:

Name: David Wellington Chew

Age: 60

Occupation: Chief Justice, Court of Appeals Eighth District of Texas

Residence: Central

Relevant Experience: Born in El Paso (1947), he is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (1971) the SMU Law School (1978). He has served as a naval officer, attorney, city councilman and Court of Appeals justice (1996-2006). He was appointed Chief Justice by Governor Rick Perry in October 2006.

1. What is the most important issue facing the court?

On a national level, the systematic erosion of the rule of law and partisan attacks on judicial independence. On a state level, preparing for the next legislative session, which will certainly include judicial redistricting, judicial budget constraints and judicial retention issues. On the local level, continuing the court’s commitment that justice is done well and that it is seen to be done well.

2. How would you describe the importance of the court?

The intermediate courts of appeal in Texas, the Eighth, or El Paso court, being one of the fourteen such courts, are effectively the courts of last resort in the vast majority of civil and criminal cases. For example, in the FY 2007, the Texas Supreme Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals, each with discretionary jurisdiction to consider the decisions of the courts of appeal, considered less than 400 of the more than 11,000 opinions issued by the courts of appeal. In that same period the three justices of the Eighth Court of Appeal issued 300 opinions.

3. El Paso has long been seen as a liberal court, and often is overruled by the more conservative State Supreme Court. Is El Paso out of step with Texas, and is that a good thing or a bad thing?

That perception and statement are not correct and not borne out by the actual statistics. Over a 6-year period, 2000 to 2006, average percentage of the Eighth’s cases reversed by the Supreme Court was about 1.27 %, the high was 3.56% and the low 0.0%. In criminal appeals, the average reversal rate was 2.51%. Notwithstanding the conservatism of the Supreme Court, if reversal rates are to be used as a measure of liberalism versus conservatism, the Eighth Court of Appeals, for the 13 years that I have served, (10-years with all Democrats and the last two with one Republican justice and one Democrat), the Eighth’s reversal rating is consistently in the middle of all the courts of appeal. In 2007, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded only 2 cases out of the more than 300 that we issued in the relevant time frame.

4. The court shrunk from four places to three in 2005. Would you work to change it back to four places? Why or why not?

In 2005, the Texas Legislature removed Midland County, the Speaker of the House’s district, and four abutting counties from the jurisdiction of the El Paso Court of Appeals and moved them to the Eastland court and, at the same time, reduced the El Paso court from four to three justices. The legislature would have to decide to return those five counties to our jurisdiction to justify a fourth justice based on caseload. My priority is to ensure that El Paso will continue to be the seat of the Eighth Court of Appeals.

5. Is there fair access to justice for everyone? How would you improve access; specifically, how would you support public defenders?

In El Paso County, yes. The El Paso Plan, was created by the El Paso Bar Association years ago, and it serves as the foundation to the El Paso County Public Defender’s Office. It is the benchmark for the State of Texas. In the other 16 counties of our jurisdiction, from our vantage point, there appears to be fair access to justice for indigent defendants and equally important competent representation by both public defenders and court appointed counsel. The Eighth also considers appeals transferred to it from other courts, and, under my predecessor, established the first video-conference oral arguments in Texas for cases transferred from Dallas or Houston.