Patrick Higginbotham

Last updated
Elizabeth O'Neal Higginbotham
​
​
(died 2017)​
Patrick Errol Higginbotham
Higginbotham Patrick E.jpg
Senior Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Assumed office
August 28, 2006
Children2
Education University of Alabama (BA, LLB)

Patrick Errol Higginbotham (born December 16, 1938) is an American judge and lawyer who serves as a Senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Contents

Background and education

Judge Higginbotham was born in McCalla, Alabama, to George and Ann Higginbotham (née Tumlin). [1] The youngest of three, Higginbotham showed academic promise early in life.

Higginbotham received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Alabama in 1960, attending on a tennis scholarship offered to him by then-Athletic-Director Paul "Bear" Bryant and serving as the team captain. He finished college and law school in just five years and received in 1961 a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Alabama School of Law at Tuscaloosa, [2] where he also met Elizabeth, his eventual wife of 52 years. [3]

Career

He was in the United States Air Force, JAG Corps from 1961 to 1964. He then joined Coke & Coke in Dallas, Texas from 1964 to 1975, where he primarily worked in antitrust litigation. He was an adjunct professor of constitutional law at the Southern Methodist University School of Law in 1976. [4]

Federal judicial service

District court

Higginbotham was nominated by President Gerald Ford on December 2, 1975, to a seat on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas vacated by Judge Sarah T. Hughes. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on December 12, 1975, and received commission the same day. At the time he was appointed to the District Court, he was the youngest sitting judge in the country. [5] His service was terminated on August 3, 1982, due to elevation to the Fifth Circuit. [4] He was succeeded by Judge Joe Fish.

Appellate court

Higginbotham was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on July 1, 1982, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated by Judge Reynaldo Guerra Garza. He was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on July 27, 1982, and received commission on July 30, 1982. In 2005, he moved his chambers from Dallas, Texas to Austin, Texas. He assumed senior status on August 28, 2006. [4]

Supreme Court consideration

In 1986, when the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court of the United States was flailing, Higginbotham was widely considered the leading replacement candidate. After Senators Lloyd Bentsen and Dennis DeConcini came out in support of his nomination, the Reagan administration, unwilling to allow the senators to both prevent the appointment of Bork and dictate the next nominee, declined to nominate Higginbotham. [6] [7] The nomination eventually went to Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Other service

For many years, Higginbotham was a faculty member at the Federal Judicial Center and, as an appointee of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the chairman of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules. He served as president of the American Inns of Court Foundation, and in 1996 the Dallas chapter of that organization renamed itself after him. He has been a leading proponent and former chairman of The Center for American and International Law, a Dallas-based organization which aims to train foreign and domestic lawyers and police officers, a Fellow of the American Bar Association, chairman of its Appellate Judges Conference, member of the Board of Editors of the ABA Journal , and advisor to the National Center for State Courts on its study of habeas corpus. He is also a lifetime member of the American Law Institute and a member of the Board of Overseers, Institute of Civil Justice, RAND Corporation.

Speeches and writings

Higginbotham has published a number of articles in law reviews and newspapers. [8] He is also a frequent speaker on various legal topics, particularly the death penalty and the decline of jury trials, having lectured at places including the Universities of Alabama, Chicago, St. Mary's, Texas, Texas Tech, Columbia, Duke, and Penn, as well as Case Western, Northwestern, Utah, Loyola, Hofstra, the National Science Foundation, The American College of Trial Lawyers and the National Institute of Trial Advocacy.

Personal life

Higginbotham married Elizabeth O'Neal in August 1961. [3] They were married until her death from Alzheimer's disease on June 10, 2017, at the age of 78. [9] They had two daughters.

Notable opinions

Awards and recognition

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit</span> Current United States federal appellate court

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is a federal appellate court over the following U.S. district courts:

Emilio Miller Garza is a former United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and former United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edith Jones</span> American judge (born 1949)

Edith Hollan Jones is a United States circuit judge and the former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William H. Pryor Jr.</span> American judge (born 1962)

William Holcombe Pryor Jr. is an American lawyer who has served as the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit since 2020. He was appointed as a United States circuit judge of the court by President George W. Bush in 2004. He is a former commissioner of the United States Sentencing Commission. Previously, he was the attorney general of Alabama, from 1997 to 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John M. Walker Jr.</span> American judge (born 1940)

John Mercer Walker Jr. is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He served as chief judge from September 30, 2000, to September 30, 2006, when he assumed senior status. He was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, appointed in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan before being elevated to the Second Circuit in 1989.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edith Brown Clement</span> American judge (born 1948)

Edith Brown Clement is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diane S. Sykes</span> American judge (born 1957)

Diane Schwerm Sykes is an American jurist and lawyer who serves as the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She served as a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1999 to 2004.

<i>Hopwood v. Texas</i> 1996 U.S. court case

Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 932, was the first successful legal challenge to a university's affirmative action policy in student admissions since Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In Hopwood, four white plaintiffs who had been rejected from University of Texas at Austin's School of Law challenged the institution's admissions policy on equal protection grounds and prevailed. After seven years as a precedent in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the Hopwood decision was abrogated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diane Wood</span> American judge (born 1950)

Diane Pamela Wood is an American attorney who serves as the director of the American Law Institute, a senior circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fortunato Benavides</span> American judge (1947–2023)

Fortunato Pedro Benavides was an American judge. From 1994 until 2023, he served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerry Edwin Smith</span> American judge

Jerry Edwin Smith is an American attorney and jurist serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Circuit split</span> Legal predicament

In United States federal courts, a circuit split, also known as a split of authority or split in authority, occurs when two or more different circuit courts of appeals provide conflicting rulings on the same legal issue. The existence of a circuit split is one of the factors that the Supreme Court of the United States considers when deciding whether to grant review of a case. Some scholars suggest that the Supreme Court is more likely to grant review of a case to resolve a circuit split than for any other reason.

William Eugene Davis, known as W. Eugene Davis, is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. His chambers are in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Stephanos Bibas is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Before his appointment to the bench, Bibas was a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he also served as director of its Supreme Court clinic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen A. Higginson</span> American judge (born 1961)

Stephen Andrew Higginson is a circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the Presiding Judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.

Fisher v. University of Texas, 570 U.S. 297 (2013), also known as Fisher I, is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court voided the lower appellate court's ruling in favor of the university and remanded the case, holding that the lower court had not applied the standard of strict scrutiny, articulated in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), to its admissions program. The Court's ruling in Fisher took Grutter and Bakke as given and did not directly revisit the constitutionality of using race as a factor in college admissions.

<i>Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress Intl</i> 2002 U.S. court case

Veeck v. Southern Bldg. Code Congress Int'l, Inc., 293 F.3d 791, was a 2002 en banc 9-6 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, about the scope of copyright protection for building codes and by implication other privately drafted laws adopted by states and municipal governments. A three-fifths majority of the court's fifteen judges held that copyright protection no longer applied to model codes once they were enacted into law.

Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, 579 U.S. 582 (2016), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court announced on June 27, 2016. The Court ruled 5–3 that Texas cannot place restrictions on the delivery of abortion services that create an undue burden for women seeking an abortion. On June 28, 2016, the Supreme Court refused to hear challenges from Wisconsin and Mississippi where federal appeals courts had struck down similar laws. Other states with similar laws may also be impacted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James C. Ho</span> American judge (born 1973)

James Chiun-Yue Ho is a Taiwanese-born American jurist who serves as a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He was nominated to the Fifth Circuit by President Donald Trump, and took office in 2018. Ho formerly served as Solicitor General of Texas from 2008 to 2010.

Houston Community College System v. Wilson, 595 U.S. ___ (2022), is a United States Supreme Court case involving the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The unanimous Court held that a local government board member's freedom of speech was not abridged when he was verbally censured by his colleagues.

References

  1. ↑ Texas, U.S., Birth Index, 1903-1997
  2. ↑ "Patrick Higginbotham - A Brilliant, Fearless, Independent Judge" (PDF). The Texas Lawbook. 2014.
  3. 1 2 "20 Aug 1961, 74 - The Birmingham News at Newspapers.com". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2021-08-10.
  4. 1 2 3 "Higginbotham, Patrick Errol - Federal Judicial Center". www.fjc.gov.
  5. 1 2 "Patrick Higginbotham - St. Mary's Law". St. Mary's School of Law. Retrieved 2018-10-10.
  6. ↑ Newsweek, Vol. 116, p. 61 (1990).
  7. ↑ Jan Crawford Greenburg, Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court, p. 62 (2007).
  8. ↑ See, e.g., Two Judges' Perspectives on Trial by Jury, 12 Tex. Wesleyan L. Rev. 1201 (2006); So Why Do We Call Them Trial Courts?, 55 S.M.U. L. Rev. 1405 (2002); Foreword, 54 S.M.U. L. Rev. 1679 (2001); Thoughts About Professor Resnick's Paper, 148 U. Pa. L. Rev. 2197 (2000); A Note About a Colleague, 76 Tex. L. Rev. 905 (1998); The Continuing Dialogue of Federalism, 45 U. Kan. L. Rev. 985 (1997); Irving L. Goldberg Memorial, 73 Tex. L. Rev. 975 (1995); Notes on Teague, 66 S. Cal. L. Rev. 2433 (1993); Juries and the Death Penalty, 41 Case W. L. Rev. 1047 (1991); Reflections on Reform of Sec. 2254, 18 Hofstra L. Rev. 1005 (1990); Text and Precedent in Constitutional Adjudication, 73 Cornell L. Rev. 411 (1988).
  9. ↑ Dallas Morning News, June 14, 2017.
  10. ↑ Burka, Paul, Senior Executive Editor of Texas Monthly (2006). Exit Lines. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
Legal offices
Preceded byJudge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas
1975–1982		Succeeded by
Preceded byJudge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
1982–2006		Succeeded by
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.