South Texas College of Law, Annotations (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 7, No. 2, August, 1978 Page: 2 of 13
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1303 San Jacinto St.
Houston, Texas 77002
ANNOTATIONS
Volume VII, Number 2
August 1978
Now By Choice: Women In Family Law
By Jerill Romeo Little
Staff Writer
"There are many
lawyers working in Houston, but
unfortunately most of them are
working in Family Law."
This remark was in response to
a question I asked a practicing
attorney, who shall remain name-
less, regarding the number of
women attorneys working in
Houston. His answer smacked of
the musty smell of historical
disdain for divorce, when people
only spoke of divorce in hushed
tones and the child of a divorced
parent apologized for his parents'
impropriety for the rest of his life.
No profession echoed that
contempt to a more celebrated
degree than did the legal pro-
fession. The large firms on Wall
Street and in Washington con-
sidered it dirty business and
beneath the dignity of the firm.
If an associate had the poor
taste to find himself in such a
position, the case was farmed out
to one of those firms that
handled such matters. These
firms were considered to be one
of the lower rungs of the legal
ladder.
The trend changed when peo-
ple of the financial calibre of the
Blackmans and Sakowitzs severed
their relationships. The resulting
property reverberations were felt
in many a law firm. The divorce
rate soared and the tasteless
firms who "handled such mat-
ters' ' were to be pitied all the way
to the bank.
Suddenly, Divorce Law was
given a more suitable name and
christened "Family Law."
Judge Felix Salazar Jr., 312th
District Court, a graduate of
South Texas College of Law
(1954) and a practicing lawyer for
24 years, has a different view.
"It's gotten to the point where
divorce is entirely ancillary to the
matter. The principal cause of the
action is the property dispute.
And this can include contract law,
corporation law and tax law."
Burta Rhoads Raborn, Bates
Law School (1962), past president
of the Association of Women
Attorneys and a Board Certified
Family Law Specialist, says that it
is true that one-third of the
practicing bar in Family Courts
Con tinned or page 5
Judges and Specialists discuss women in Family Law. Clockwise from top left: Judge Felix
Salazar Jr., Joan Heisler, Burta Rhoads Raborn and Judge Henry G. Shubie.
Attorney General John Hill
Crime, Judicial Redisricting
By David Dies
opinion by the Attorney General's
office la not the equivalent of
statutory law or law by the Courts
of this state. How would you
classify an opinion by the At-
torney General's office and what
effect does It have on areas of the
legal field such as the courts and
The Courts have answered
that by saying that an opinion by
the State Attorney General is
entitled to weight with the Court,
in deciding the ultimate question
of law. In practice the Attorney
General's opinion is accepted by
those who are involved in the
question that is being resolved, so
in effect the Attorney General
becomes a Court in many in-
stances, because his opinion is
the final decision and is so
accepted by the parties. I would
say that it is probably a quasi-
judical function, remembering
that the primary goal of thr
Attorney General is to try to
counsel and advise with the State
agencies, boards, and depart-
ments on legal matters, and to try
to keep those agencies, boards
and departments operating within
the law so as to minimize Court
litigation and avoid unnecessary
controversy. If the Attorney
General is respected and if his
opinions are respected, then it
does avoid a great deal of
controversy and unnecessary ex-
Attorney General's office not only
has the authority to represent
State agencies but also the
authority to sue State agencies.
Where does the State get this
authority?
That has been my position
and that point is being litigated at
this time. I hope the Texas
Supreme Court will ultimately
rule on the matter so that we can
have a resolution of it in our State
at the highest court level. In many
other states the highest state
court has ruled that the Attorney
General's overriding responsi-
bility is to the public interest.
This was derived from common
law doctrine. The Attorney Gen-
eral was the protector of the
people at common law, and that
duty overrode any duty he had to
advise the king or to counsel with
the king. With Texas being a
common law jurisdiction it is our
position that the State Attorney
General has the duty and the
obligation to challenge the State
agency if that State agency has
taken illegal action. I don't take
the position that the Attorney
General is entitled to substitute
his judgment on policy matters or
to override a State agency be-
cause he may philosophically
disagree with that agency. But if
the action of the State agency is
outside the law, then the Attorney
General is obliged to disqualify
himself and allow the State
agency to have outside counsel,
and then to challenge the ruling
on behalf of the public. We have
two examples of this. One was the
sale of water by the LCRA, a State
agency in the lower regions of the
Colorado River, to a South Texas
nuclear project at a price of over
$50 million. I took the position
that the water belonged to the
State and not to the LCRA, and
that they had no legal authority to
sell it. Any sale that could be
made had to be made on behalf of
the people, the public at large.
Now in my way of thinking, that is
a pure question of law, not a
matter of policy. It is a question of
whether the legal right existed to
sell the water in the first place.
So, in that instance, I believe that
I do have the standing to
challenge the action as illegal.
The other example occurred when
the Texas Water Quality Board
separated into seven segments a
Water Quality Control Board
Order that was designed to avoid
pollution in the aquifer. The
aquifer is a source of under-
ground water in which approxi-
mately one million people living
around San Antonio are depend-
ent for their drinking water. In
fact, it is the sole source of supply
for drinking water in that area.
I took the position that while it
was for the Board to decide what
kind of order should be devised
and that it was not for me to
determine as being a technical
matter, whatever they did had to
be done equally and Uniformly in
all seven counties that overlay the
aquifer. They could not divide the
order and show precedence for
the pollution controls of one
county over another. That was
illegal. When they did not comply
with my legal interpretation, I
thought it was my duty to
challenge their action and that is
what I have done.
You were successful in rep-
resenting the State's Interest
Honor Code
Remains
Undecided
By Kembra Smith
controversy. What are the :
cations of that case? What is the
next step by the State of Texas?
The next step is to protect
the jury verdict which we won in
the Probate Court in Houston.
The jury there found that Howard
Hughes was a domicile of Texas
at tiie time of his death and that
he had never abandoned the
original domicile of Texas, al-
though he had rarely been
physically present in this state for
some years. We are protecting
that verdict by resisting the
efforts of California to bring the
controversy before the United
States Supreme Court. So far, we
have been successful in resisting
the efforts of the Estate to appeal
the verdict and the verdict is still
intact. Recently the Estate filed
an interpleader action in the
Federal Court for the Western
District of Texas at Austin asking
that the matter be finally re-
solved. We are taking the position
that Federal jurisdiction does not
reach this controversy, that this is
on pane 2
On July 17 and 18, 1978, STCL
students voted on a revised honor
code and asecurity proposal. The
security proposal was decided
and is in progress towards actual-
ization. The honor code is still
undecided.
The vote on the honor code was
167 (66 percent) for, 72 (28
percent) against, and 14 (six
percent) abstentions. The honor
code voted upon was a revision of
the code which has been in effect
since 1974.
There is no spelled provision
for the creation of a new code, but
the code provides that amend-
ments to the code follow the
procedure "as provided in Art.
IX, Constitution of the Student
Bar Association." Under Article
K(b), which deals with ratifica-
tion, a proposed amendment
"must be approved by three-
forths of the members present
and voting to be adopted, pro-
vided that five percent of the
Student Bar is in attendance."
If the revised code is to be
interpreted as an amendment to
the previous honor code, the
necessary vote was not achieved.
Therein lies the present status
of the revised honor code. Though
the words "apparently passed"
were used by some members of
SBA, so were the words "some
i page 8
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Dies, David & Bettman, Gerald S. South Texas College of Law, Annotations (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 7, No. 2, August, 1978, newspaper, August 1978; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth144375/m1/2/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting South Texas College of Law.