The Texan Podcast - Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock at the Texas GOP 2026 State Convention

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock joined The Texan's Reporter Mary Elise O'Bar at the Republican Party of Texas' 2026 state convention to discuss his experience in leading the state's highest civil court, constitutional originalism, reforming child welfare in Texas, and more.Listen to more interviews from The Texan wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, follow us and leave a review.

Well, thank you for joining the Texan News here at the Republican Party Texas Convention. It's great to have you. Yeah. Happy to be with you. So I would like to ask you and kind of give our readers our perspective on what would you say you're most proud of and what you've been most interested in since you were appointed by Abbott in 2025 and your work generally? Well, I was appointed first to the court in 2018 as an associate justice and then in 2025, as you said, as the chief. Chief Justice, you know, I'm proud of the court that we've built over the years, the court that I sort of inherited as the Chief Justice. It's something that I was a part of for many years and then going back before I was on the court, our previous Chief Justice, Nathan Hecht, the name that everybody should know. He was the longest serving judge in Texas history, the longest serving justice in Supreme Court history. He became a Supreme Court justice when I was about 10 years old, around 1990, and worked very, very hard over many years to turn our Supreme Court into a really excellent institution that I think fairly and consistently applies the law the way it's written, not the way we would like it to be. We apply the Constitution based on what it originally meant to the people who ratified it, not based on what we'd like it to say.

And the court was on a really good track when I became Chief Justice. And I'm proud to have played a little role in that. And very proud of the justices and in particular the Chief Justice who came before me. So you mentioned your predecessor and something that I believe you differ from him on is constitutional originalism. And you mentioned that before. I think you said that the living constitution is dead when you gave your state of the judiciary address. Can you talk about that? And what does that look like when you apply it practically in your work?

and why is that a philosophy that you hold? Well, Nathan Hecht was certainly not a proponent of the living Constitution. We might have had disagreements around the edges about how to do originalism and what kinds of questions to ask and how to weigh history against precedent, which is a debate that judges are constantly having when they look at the Constitution. It's very, very important as judges that we look to an external source, of authority outside of our own opinions when we're interpreting the Constitution. The Constitution is a deal that our ancestors made.

At that time, they agreed to be governed in a certain way, and they agreed that their descendants would be governed in that way, unless their descendants change the Constitution, which in Texas is pretty easy. But our job is to give life to that deal, to honor the deal that was made by generations that came before us about how they wanted to be governed, and to leave it to the people to change that deal if they want to. And when you do originalism, what you're asking is, what did these words mean when the people of Texas, who were supposed to be in charge of all of this, agreed to them?

The living Constitution says, well, even if it's not amended through the process, the Constitution has to change over time with changing times, and it's the judge's job. to decide when and how it changes. And there's a real serious problem with that way of looking at things, because what that does is it puts the judges in charge rather than putting the Constitution in charge. And that's why it's so important that we stick to the original meaning of the Constitution. Something else you mentioned in that address was judicial pay raises.

Would you look for any more of a pay raise? Are you pretty satisfied with 25%. We'll see. you know, I've got to sit down later this year and think about what to bring to the legislature, if anything, as Chief Justice, as the leader of the judicial branch. There are all kinds of things that we might ask them to think about, but we are absolutely not in any kind of a crisis in terms of judicial pay the way we were two years ago, and it's because of the action that they took for which I and everybody else on the courts is very grateful.

But something else that you have talked about is reforming child welfare systems. Could you speak to that a little bit? Well, those are some of the most difficult cases that we face where children have been mistreated, abused, neglected. They've been taken from their parents. The state's got to decide through the court system where the children will go, whether this family will continue or whether the family will not continue. The children will be taken from their parents. forever. Those are very, very difficult cases for us to decide, but we have to decide them. And one thing about that system that troubles me as a Texan, in addition to as a judge,

is when you look at cases where the children have been taken from their parents, they become wards of the state, the state's taken responsibility for the child, And then the children do very poorly in that environment or perhaps even worse than they are doing with their parents. That's a very, very sad thing to see. Ultimately, the court's job is to ask whether, because of what the parents have done, often it's drug addiction contributing to it, has this situation crossed the line where the right thing to do for these kids and even for these parents is for the government to end this family and allow the children to start a new family, we hope,

with adopted parents who love them. As you can imagine, that's a very, very difficult thing to deal with for everybody in the system, from the person who knocks on the door to respond to the child abuse report, all the way up to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. We all struggle with those questions and need to take them very, very seriously. Switching gears a little bit,

I'm curious to hear more from you about a letter you sent to Dallas County judge regarding mask mandates for courtroom access. I think it's a very interesting topic for Texans. Could you speak to why? I think you said you found no legitimate basis for those court room or for those mask mandates. Could you explain why you found no basis for that? Yeah, the question for me, to be honest with you, is whether mask mandates were valid in 2020. We're in 2006. And there should be no more question about. about that. A judge in Dallas had been requiring masks ever since COVID. And as soon as I learned about that, the court stepped in and we asked her to stop doing that because human interaction face-to-face

in a courtroom and uninhibited access to the courtroom for the public and for the lawyers and the parties and the jurors. That's all an essential part of the way our judicial system has to operate. So the court asks that judge to cease that policy and she's indicated that she will. And I take her at her word and she intends to resume normal in-person hearings soon, I'm told. As I said, I take her completely at her word. I think she's been very helpful and very responsive with the court's engagement on this. and we'll continue to monitor the situation, but I think it's resolved. Okay, excellent.

I'd like to ask you, before we wrap up, would you like to describe any challenges that you think are facing the Texas court system, say right now, but also looking ahead in 10 years, some things that might face it? I think something that will always face our court system always has, which we're always trying to improve, is the way that when you have a lawsuit, things other than who's right and who's wrong under the law can often affect the outcome of the lawsuit.

So a party who shouldn't have to pay can be coerced into paying by the expense and burden of litigation. People will settle cases where they didn't do anything wrong because they just want to get rid of the case. On the other side of that, people who should be paid, who have been injured, have been harmed,

and are entitled to be paid under the law, they may not get paid because of the expense and burden that it takes to go through litigation. We're never going to solve that problem, but everything we do at the Supreme Court in terms of our oversight of the rules of procedure and the opinions that we write, we're trying to move our system in a direction in which who is right or wrong under the law is the deciding factor in lawsuits, as opposed to external pressures like the cost and burden of litigation. Are there any other ways that you could see the cost lowered for these individuals?

Are there any like practical steps that could be taken? You know, we can look at the cost of discovery, the burden that litigation imposes on people. We could look at, you know, are there ways to resolve more quickly certain categories of lawsuits, to get them in front of a judge quickly, to resolve them quickly so that cases aren't lingering in expensive litigation for years and years.

We've at the court tried to, in our own procedures, streamline them over the last, a couple of years and to reduce the time and money that it takes to litigate at the Supreme Court. We're trying to do that ourselves and we're asking courts all around the state to do that to the extent they can. Well, that's all of my questions, but thank you for joining the Texan News. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much.