Judge Under Fire

A judge who lobbied for Harriet Miers is under fire for dabbing in politics, according to the New York Times:

A year after the Bush administration enlisted a Texas Supreme Court justice in its unsuccessful bid to put Harriet E. Miers on the United States Supreme Court, a special state court is to announce Friday whether the judge was guilty of “willful and persistent” violations of judicial ethics for his role in that effort.

The justice, Nathan L. Hecht, 57, the longest-serving member of the Texas high court and a friend of Ms. Miers for 30 years, testified before the State Commission on Judicial Conduct that he had given about 120 interviews to reporters in which he promoted her nomination.

Justice Hecht, a Republican who is running for re-election, also said he had reported back to the White House on questions he was asked about Ms. Miers, President Bush’s longtime counsel.

Justice Hecht was widely portrayed in news reports as Ms. Miers’s “spokesman.” Defending himself before commission members, he said he had been swept up in a “tsunami” of news coverage. “I felt I was drawn kicking and screaming into the process,” he testified.

But under questioning, he acknowledged, “Nobody forced me.”

Justice Hecht also told the commission that he had been advancing a public interest in Ms. Miers’s nomination, that she was not a candidate for elective office and that he was entitled to free speech.

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The commission decided in May that the justice’s actions on behalf of the White House and Ms. Miers merited a public admonition, the lightest form of reprimand, which carries no criminal or civil consequences.

But Justice Hecht sought to overturn the sanction by appealing to a Special Court of Review, which is randomly selected by the Texas Supreme Court, the nine-member bench on which Justice Hecht has served since 1989. The Texas Supreme Court has final authority over civil and juvenile delinquency cases; the Court of Criminal Appeals has ultimate jurisdiction over criminal cases.

In an unusual move, the special court — two state appellate judges from Dallas and one from El Paso — had announced this month that it would release its ruling at a court hearing and news conference in Fort Worth on Oct. 23. But this week it said instead that it would notify the parties by e-mail and fax on Friday. No explanation was given for the change.

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Charles L. Babcock, a lawyer representing Justice Hecht, said the judge had an unblemished record and was set on vindication. “He’s a candidate for re-election,” Mr. Babcock said. Even the admonition, he said, “has a very nasty effect.”

The justice’s appeal was supported in friend of the court briefs submitted by the Republican Party of Texas and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Texas.