Fun In The Texas Courts

by Stuart Shapiro

This is not a post about someone getting the death penalty for jaywalking or a defense attorney sleeping through his client’s trial (as actually happened in Texas in the 1980s).  No, this is two more humorous examples.  First is the Texas Supreme Court citing Spock (not Dr. Spock, Spock from Star Trek) in one of its opinions.  As Liberal Values points out, this should enrage conservatives:

Conservatives, who are prone to irrational hysteria over a wide number of things, have increasingly been seeing the concept of international law as a threat. How are they going to respond if American courts start deferring to the United Federation of Planets?

Then for the baseball fans out there, I offer this motion for a continuance filed in a Texas court.  The reason for the motion, so that the plaintiff could go and see his beloved Texas Rangers in the World Series in San Francisco.  (Read the whole motion, good stuff!)

So the facts of this matter are very straightforward.  Darrell is planning to fly to San Francisco to watch his beloved Rangers play the San Francisco Giants. . . To put it bluntly, Darrell, must be in San Francisco to attend to Very Important Baseball matters and really really needs to not be obligated to attend the hearing scheduled for October 27, 2010

Hmmmm, Star Trek fans and baseball fans; maybe I’d be more at home in Texas than I thought.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.