# Texas Democratic Executive Committee v. Rains

> Texas Supreme Court · August 24, 1988 · 31 Tex. Sup. Ct. J. 645

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9679704

## Case

- **Full name:** The TEXAS DEMOCRATIC EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, Bob Slagle, Chairman, and Ron Carr, Relators, v. Jack RAINS, Secretary of State, Respondent
- **Court:** Texas Supreme Court
- **Decided:** August 24, 1988
- **Citations:** 31 Tex. Sup. Ct. J. 645; 756 S.W.2d 306; 1988 Tex. LEXIS 102; 1988 WL 86876
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Mauzy
- **Judges:** Gonzalez, Mauzy, Phillips, Culver
- **Cited by:** 8 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9679704

## Opinion text

MAUZY, Justice,
concurring.
I concur with the court’s opinion, but write to point out the strained emptiness of the dissent’s reasoning. One of the foremost principles of judicial decision-making is that courts will avoid rendering advisory opinions. Firemen’s Insurance Company of Newark, New Jersey v. Burch, 442 S.W.2d 331 (Tex.1968). Yet, that is exactly what the dissent would have this court do. By raising the spectre of two competing claims to an office, the dissent poses a hypothetical problem that does not in fact present itself to the court and then proceeds to reason around its own “what if” style of speculation. This type of reasoning may be suitable for editorial hyperbole of an idealogue, but judges are to decide *308 real disputes, not imaginary ones. Not only does the dissent focus on a purely theoretical problem, but it also relies for authority on a case that did not even involve an elected official. Sawyer v. City of San Antonio, 149 Tex. 408 , 234 S.W.2d 398 (1950), involved the resignation of a police officer and had absolutely nothing to do with election law. As such, Sawyer is simply not apposite to the case at hand.
This should have been a unanimous decision. The law is straightforward. By applying the Election Code as written, the court has merely assured that the electoral process is allowed to function in accordance with the law as passed by the people’s elected representatives.
Our job as judges is to apply the statutory law as written, not to fashion new law based on hypothetical “what if” scenarios. The people of Texas have repeatedly asserted their choice to retain their constitutional right to elect those persons who adjudicate their disputes. This right is too important and too precious to toy with through political posturing and judicial gamesmanship.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9679704. Public record. Not legal advice.