Washington – Surely it was no accident that Republicans on Wednesday sent forth Priscilla Owen, a soft-spoken Texas Supreme Court justice, to open the Senate’s political brawl over President Bush’s judicial nominees.
The 50-year-old jurist, who also teaches Sunday school, comes across as a mainstream conservative.
She is not known for making provocative speeches – unlike California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, another Bush nominee. Nor are Owen’s opinions filled with sharp jabs like those of Justice Antonin Scalia. Instead, she has made her mark by writing or joining scores of legal opinions that have made it harder for consumers and other plaintiffs to sue businesses in Texas.
“She is a thorough and careful judge who works hard and wrestles with every case,” former Texas Chief Justice Thomas Phillips said Wednesday. He rejected the notion that Owen is a right-wing activist who puts politics before the law.
“She is a very good lawyer, and I don’t think it’s easy to typecast her. We (Texas justices) tend to deal with interpreting statutes, not with big constitutional issues. But I never saw her as being on some sort of personal crusade,” said Phillips, who was seen as a moderate.
The Texas Supreme Court does not handle criminal cases or death-penalty appeals. Its docket is filled with civil disputes, many involving business.
In the 1980s, it was known as a populist, pro-plaintiff court that was friendly to trial lawyers. The justices regularly upheld huge money verdicts against corporations. Not surprisingly, business interests set out to replace them with jurists who would favor business.
There are plenty of pro-business rulings in Owen’s past. Three years ago, after Owen was first nominated to a U.S. appeals court, the Senate Judiciary Committee – then controlled by Democrats – criticized the Texas judge for a series of business- friendly decisions.
All 10 Democrats on the committee voted against her confirmation in 2002, saying she had a record of tilting the law in favor of business.
After his re-election, Bush renominated Owen to the U.S. appeals court; the now Republican- controlled committee endorsed her on a party-line, 10-8 vote.
