Intermediate Appellate Courts in Texas (Review)

Executive Summary  

In 2007, Texans for Lawsuit Reform Foundation (TLR) published The Texas Judicial System,  Recommendations for Reform, outlining the many particularities and inefficiencies in Texas’s  judicial structure. The report argued for a reduced number of intermediate appellate courts, elimination of overlapping districts, and for an end to case transfers among the courts. The current  2020 report discussed throughout this white paper supplements that paper, discussing the  redrawing of appellate court districts to create fewer courts of appeals and enhance efficiency,  giving the appellate courts the administrative authority now held by the regional presiding judges,  and redistributing the appellate court judgeships across the election cycles. SB 11 (2021) amends  the Government Code to introduce a statewide reapportionment of court of appeals districts into  which Texas is divided, eliminating some of the geographic and jurisdictional overlapping districts  that have created conflicts and inefficiencies in the intermediate appellate court system (SB 11,  2021). This white paper summarizes the recent TLR report and evaluates SB 11’s implications on  the discussed inefficiencies of the Texas judicial system.