Emilio Miller Garza
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Categories: Federal Judges | Texas Republicans
Emilio Miller Garza (born in San Antonio, Texas, 1947) is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Garza graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1969, receiving an MA there in 1970. He then joined the U.S. Marine Corps, in which he was an officer from 1970-1973. Garza earned his Juris Doctorate at the [www.utexas.edu/law University of Texas School of Law] in 1976.
On February 2, 1988, President Ronald Reagan appointed Garza to the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, to fill the seat vacated by William S. Sessions. The Senate confirmed Garza's appointment on April 19 of that year. On April 11, 1991, President George H. W. Bush nominated Garza to the Court of Appeals, and he was confirmed by the Senate on May 24, 1991.
Garza has been mentioned as a potential nominee to the United States Supreme Court.
Garza has routinely upheld Texas executions, even when the defendant's attorney slept through the trial. In another ruling, he ruled that a 15-year-old girl may have been sexually mature enough to warrant the dismissal of a statutory rape case against the accused teacher and the school district.
On abortion, Judge Garza struck down a Louisiana law banning abortion except in to save the life of the mother as unconstitutional, except in his opinion he fricasseed the judicial opinion of Roe v. Wade, also writing, "I would allow the people of the State of Louisiana to decide this issue for themselves." So his opposition isn't to `banning abortion.' It's that he knows the Supreme Court will reverse his decision a calculus which would be altered if he were actually on the Supreme Court. As noted in Slate magazine, that Republicans will likely accuse Democrats of racism if they oppose Mr. Garza[1].
Garza would be the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice since Benjamin Nathan Cardozo in the 1930s, making him harder for liberal groups to oppose. His lengthy record on the bench is conservative. One exception: Garza has expressed some concern about the Texas death penalty, which in recent years has come under repeated scrutiny by the Supreme Court. Still, he usually affirms lower-court decisions approving executions.
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Civil Rights and Liberties
Agreed with a decision by the 5th Circuit as a whole to reverse a ruling in favor of the father of a 14-year-old girl who sued a Texas school district on a civil rights violation after his daughter was kept after school by her teacher and then raped in an empty classroom. The court found that schools do not have a constitutional duty to protect students, who, unlike prisoners and mental patients, return home each day. (Doe v. Hillsboro Independent School District, 1997)
Dissented from an earlier decision finding that a 15-year-old girl whose teacher had sex with her had a winning civil rights claim, on the theory that schoolchildren have a liberty interest in their bodily integrity. Garza's dissent argued that the school district was not liable because the state did not authorize the teacher's behavior. He joined in another dissent noting that the girl "was of sufficient age to bear children" and arguing that it was not clearly established that she was "sufficiently immature" to warrant a finding that she'd been sexually abused by the sex with her teacher. (Doe v. Taylor Independent School District, 1994)
Over a dissent, wrote for the 5th Circuit as a whole in rejecting the civil rights claims of a mother who was arrested and handcuffed for not wearing a seatbelt, not fastening her children's seatbelts, driving without a license, and not providing proof of insurance. The opinion found that the police had probable cause to arrest the mother and did not conduct the arrest in an extraordinary manner. (Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, 2000)
Environmental Protection and Property Rights
Over a dissent, wrote for the 5th Circuit as a whole in rejecting a suit by environmental groups challenging a U.S. Forest Service policy of clear-cutting in the Texas forests. Held that, because the groups were challenging the forest service's general practices, the court could not grant them relief. (Sierra Club v. Peterson, 2000)
Habeas Corpus
Dissented from a decision to overturn the conviction of a death-row inmate against whom there was no physical evidence and whose lawyer failed to interview the single eyewitness to the crime. In Garza's view, his court could not hear the defendant's claim that his lawyer was ineffective because he had not raised it directly enough in his federal habeas petition. (Soffar v. Dretke, 2004)
Agreed to deny relief to a death-row inmate whose lawyer put on no evidence about his clean criminal and psychiatric record. In a concurrence, Garza expressed concern that the jury instructions given in the case might have been unconstitutional because they did not ask whether there were mitigating circumstances that might lead the jury to impose a sentence less than death. Also expressed skepticism about the validity of psychiatric predictions about the future dangerousness of a defendant. (Flores v. Johnson, 2000)
Abortion
Agreed to strike down Louisiana's abortion law as unconstitutional because it criminalized abortions except to save the life of the mother, or in cases or rape or incest. In a concurrence, Garza noted his disagreement with the relevant Supreme Court precedent, saying, "the Constitution says absolutely nothing about abortion" and "I would allow the people of the State of Louisiana to decide this issue for themselves." (Sojourner v. Edwards, 1992)
Agreed to strike down Louisiana's statute allowing teens seeking abortions to go to court rather than notifying their parents, on the grounds that the exceptions made to parental notification were too narrow. In a concurrence, reiterated his stance that the Supreme Court's opinions granting a right to abortion are "inimical to the Constitution." (Causeway Medical Suite v. Ieyoub, 1997)
For a unanimous panel, held that Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce gave it the authority to pass a law limiting the access of protesters to the entrance of abortion clinics. (U.S. v. Bird, 2005)
Judicial Philosophy
In Causeway Medical Suite v. Ieyoub, expressed dismay that the Supreme Court's broad readings of the word "liberty" in the Constitution "have slowly eroded the scope of public debate." Garza argued that if the court had stayed out of several arenas—for example, marriage, child rearing, school curricula, abortion—state laws might have changed "as public attitudes changed." Instead, "the people's Constitution—at least as to unenumerated constitutional rights—has become the Court's Constitution."
Affiliations
External links
- The Supreme Court Shortlist - Slate magazine, Friday, July 1, 2005
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