11/08/2022
Forty years ago this morning, I was at the Dallas County Courthouse waiting to take my oath before the Hon. A. Joe Fish in order to become a Texas lawyer, licensed to practice law in the State of Texas. I, Charles E. Beachley III, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitutions of the United States, and of this state; that I will honestly demean myself in the practice of law; that I will discharge my duties to my clients to the best of my ability.
That was it. Nothing about civility to opposing counsel, as is mandatory now. Of course, outside of the metro counties, we pretty much knew everybody else, and we knew that we would be seeing that same lawyer again over and over again in the immediate future. Annual dues for the Denton County Bar Association were $20. Of course, you had to pay for your lunch, it wasn’t included.
But in the metro counties, it was not so. Discovery was less a matter of Rules than of Orders and agreements, and discovery soon became a battlefield in itself. This was before the Dondi Properties case; by that time, Judge Fish was a federal District Judge, and participated in the en banc ruling. “We address today a problem that, though of relatively recent origin, is so pernicious that it threatens to delay the administration of justice and to place litigation beyond the financial reach of litigants. With alarming frequency, we find that valuable judicial and attorney time is consumed in resolving unnecessary contention and sharp practices between lawyers.”
When I was first licensed, we did not have the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals joining to order The Texas Lawyer’s Creed – A Mandate for Professionalism. We didn’t have the Denton County Customs and Practices for Lawyers. We had no statewide guidelines for child support nor a standard possession order; we had no nationwide system for the establishment, collection and enforcement of child support. Mediation was disorganized and rare, nearly the exact opposite of the situation today when mediation is the next thing to universally mandatory.
Today is, coincidentally, also Election Day 2022. Most Texas judges are elected, so many will be on the ballot today. Your local judge is much more likely to have a direct, personal impact on you and yours than who lives in the Governor's Mansion in Austin or the White House in Washington, D.C. These down-ballot races are very important, and deserve your attention.
Recently, I have heard colleagues complain, court personnel complain, even some judges complain that we are sliding back into the scorched-earth war mentality, the Rambo hired gun attitude. And it’s not limited to the judicial system; it seems to me there is an excess of omnipresent anger, rage in the wind (or is it the water?), and our connectedness, our community, our union is being fractured into squabbling principalities, armed camps, with the predominant form of political or patriotic discourse has become the attack ad.
I have taken that oath and similar ones many times over the course of four decades. I’m double Board Certified, so I have to renew my oath (twice) every five years. I have taken it anew when I was admitted to the federal Northern and Eastern Districts of Texas, to the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and to the bar of the United States Supreme Court. I don’t say I’ve never stumbled, never erred, never fallen short. I do pride myself on what I have done, what I have withstood, what I have defended, how I have lived as a Texas lawyer, and I will try to continue faithful to the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America and to the Constitution and laws of the State of Texas.
