Supreme Court of Texas chief justice outlines conference process for handling petitions and opinions

Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson of the Supreme Court of Texas described the court’s internal conference process and how the court decides which petitions to take, how draft opinions are debated and how emergency items are handled.

Jefferson said the court meets at least once a month in conference to consider preliminary and emergency matters, post-submission cases that have been argued, draft opinions authored by justices and new petitions seeking review. "We are striving to do justice in each case and we are trying to do it efficiently," he said.

The nut of the process, Jefferson said, is sequential: the court addresses emergency or preliminary items first, then post-submission cases (recently argued matters), then draft opinions, and finally petitions that have been filed but not yet granted. For emergency filings,…