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Gotcha! (film)

Gotcha! is a 1985 American spy action comedy film, starring Anthony Edwards and Linda Fiorentino and directed by Jeff Kanew, who also directed Edwards in Revenge of the Nerds (1984).

In the film, Jonathan Moore (Edwards) is a shy UCLA veterinary student and the reigning champion at "Gotcha", a campus-wide paintball game. While on vacation in Paris, he is seduced by an older woman, the sexy and mysterious Sasha (Fiorentino), and soon becomes embroiled in an international espionage operation.

Plot
Jonathan Moore, an 18-year-old veterinary student at UCLA, is an expert at "Gotcha", a popular Assassin-like game where students chase each other on campus using paintball guns. Jonathan and his roommate Manolo travel to Paris during spring break. While alone in a café, Jonathan meets Sasha Banicek, a 24-year-old Czechoslovakian woman, and later loses his virginity to her.

Instead of going to Spain with Manolo, Jonathan accompanies Sasha to West Berlin to spend more time with her. In their hotel room, Sasha tells Jonathan that she has to go to East Berlin to pick up a package, as she works as a courier. One night, after arriving in East Berlin, Sasha sneaks out their hotel room while Jonathan is asleep and meets with a German man, who tells her the location of the pickup of her package. Unknowingly, Sasha is monitored by Vlad, a Soviet agent.

The next day, Sasha tells Jonathan that if she ever instructs him to meet her at the Café Friedrichstrasse, it means that he must immediately leave East Berlin, and hands him a package with a strudel. Noticing that Vlad is following them, Sasha tells Jonathan to meet her at a butcher shop near their hotel in one hour. Vlad chases her, but she escapes. She is ordered by the German man to use Jonathan to get the package over to West Berlin. Sasha meets Jonathan at a subway station, slipping an object into his backpack and saying she will meet him back at the hotel. However, she later calls him and tells him to meet her at the Café Friedrichstrasse.

That night, while Jonathan rushes to Checkpoint Charlie to cross into West Berlin, Sasha is caught by Vlad and the East German secret police; she is strip-searched by the Soviets, but nothing is found on her. Vlad arrives at the border crossing to search for Jonathan, who has crossed the border safely before he could be captured. Once in West Berlin, Jonathan finds that his hotel room has been ransacked and his traveler's checks have been stolen. Vlad and his henchmen eventually find Jonathan at the Spandau Citadel, the location Sasha gave him, where he meets a woman who asks for the object Sasha gave him. She is confused when he gives her the strudel, before Vlad shoots her. The agents chase Jonathan through the Citadel. Jumping into a water canal, Jonathan escapes and stumbles upon a German punk rock band headed for Hamburg, who offer him a ride to the airport.

Soon after Jonathan safely makes it back to Los Angeles, a band of Soviet agents led by Vlad also arrives. Jonathan finds the object planted by Sasha, a film canister, in his backpack. He visits his parents and tells them what happened in Germany, but they do not believe him and instead accuse him of being a drug addict. Jonathan decides to call the CIA for help, telling them about Sasha and the film. Temporarily arrested for ramming a car, Jonathan returns the next morning to find his apartment broken into and looted.

The CIA tells Jonathan to bring them the film canister. At the CIA's Los Angeles headquarters, Jonathan is surprised to find Sasha working there. Jonathan arranges a meeting with Sasha at UCLA and uses Manolo's help to separate her from the CIA agents. Sasha admits that she is actually Cheryl Brewster, a CIA agent from Pittsburgh, before Vlad and his henchmen appear and chase the pair through the campus. During their flight, Jonathan seizes a tranquilizer gun from the veterinary sciences building and uses it to incapacitate their pursuers. The Soviets are arrested and the CIA agents thank Jonathan for his help in obtaining the film. Cheryl/Sasha tells him she wants to continue their relationship, and they kiss.

After they part, Jonathan talks to an attractive student who previously rebuffed him, and she coldly turns him down. As she walks away, he aims the tranquilizer gun and shoots her in the rear.

Production
Gotcha! was filmed in October 1984, with principal photography in Los Angeles (in and around the UCLA campus), Paris and West Berlin.

Soundtrack
The original soundtrack album for Gotcha! was released on LP in 1985 on the MCA Records label. It features the theme song "Gotcha!" by British singer Thereza Bazar, which was recorded for the film. The album also includes songs by Giuffria and Nik Kershaw, among others. Songs used in the film but not included on the MCA soundtrack album include "Two Tribes" and "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

In 2020, Intrada Records released a limited edition album of Bill Conti's 28-minute-long score, two tracks of which were on the 1985 soundtrack album. One cue was re-arranged for the 1985 soundtrack album. None of the pop songs could be licensed for this release.

Reception
Vincent Canby of The New York Times described the film as "a small but elaborately overproduced comedy-melodrama." He went on to deride the lack of flair in the film, calling it "as devoid of personality as it's possible for a narrative movie to be." In a similar vein, Leonard Maltin commented that Gotcha! was "very nearly a good movie, with some sharp dialogue to start but loses its appeal as it loses credibility." Giving the film two stars out of four, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times described the European sequences as "a well-directed cat-and-mouse game" that lost its way in the final act after returning to the United States, with the film's main flaw being a focus on Edwards' character when Fiorentino was far more intriguing: "I'll bet the men who made this movie just assumed it had to be told from his point of view, and never considered hers. Too bad. I think they missed their best chance."

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 31% based on 13 reviews, with an average rating of 5/10.

In popular culture
In the television series Chuck, the name "Sasha Banicek" is used for a character played by guest star Melinda Clarke in the episode "Chuck Versus the Seduction" that aired on October 6, 2008.

title: Gotcha! (film)


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Ryan Steele

Ryan Steele may refer to:
 * Ryan Steele (comedian), one-half of the duo The Ryan and Amy Show
 * Ryan Steele (actor), American dancer and actor
 * Ryan Steele, a VR Troopers character

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Ryan Steele


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Robert de Ferrers, 1st Earl of Derby

Robert I de Ferrers, 1st Earl of Derby (c. 1068 – 1139) was born in Derbyshire, England, a younger son of Henry de Ferrières and his wife Bertha (perhaps l'Aigle). His father, born in Ferrières, Normandy, France accompanied William the Conqueror during his invasion of England. The family was rewarded with a grant of Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire and 114 manors in Derbyshire.

Robert's elder brother William's main interests were in France. He joined Robert Curthose and was captured at Tinchebray. His other brother Engenulf died shortly after his father and so Robert succeeded to the estates in 1088.

From the beginning, he gave great support to Henry I. As part of his tenure of Duffield Frith in 1129–30, he is on record as having interests in lead mines at Wirksworth. At about this time he granted the church of Potterspury, Northamptonshire, to Bernard the Scribe.

It is, however, during his last years that he is most in evidence as a leading supporter of King Stephen. He took a large body of Derbyshire men northwards to assist in repelling an invasion of the Scots under King David I of Scotland, nominally on the behalf of Matilda. Little actual fighting took place, but Thurstan, Archbishop of York, won the Battle of the Standard on Stephen's behalf, fought near Northallerton, on 22 August 1138.

Robert was mainly instrumental in securing the victory for his Sovereign, who for this and other important services created him Earl of Derby, although charters and chronicles during this period refer to him interchangeably as Earl of Ferrers, Earl of Nottingham or Earl of Derby.

He died in the following year (1139) and was succeeded in his earldom by his second but eldest surviving son Robert de Ferrers, 2nd Earl of Derby, often known as Robert de Ferrers the Younger.

As with most Norman lords, the Ferrers brought their Norman underlords to England with them – in this case, the Curzon (of Kedleston), Livet (Levett) and Boscherville (Baskerville) families, who held their fiefs in Normandy from the Ferrers, and who subsequently held their English lands from Ferrers as well. (The undertenant family names derive from Notre-Dame-de-Courson, Livet-en-Ouche and Boscherville, all part of the Ferrers barony in Normandy.) These undertenants retained their ties to the Ferrers after the families had moved to England following the Norman Conquest.

title: Robert de Ferrers, 1st Earl of Derby


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Diego Corrales

Diego "Chico" Corrales Jr. (August 25, 1977 – May 7, 2007) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1996 to 2007. He was a multiple-time world champion in two weight divisions, having held the IBF super featherweight title from 1999 to 2000; the WBO super featherweight title in 2004; the WBO lightweight title from 2004 to 2006; and the WBC, Ring magazine, and lineal lightweight titles from 2005 to 2006.

In 2005, Corrales received Fight of the Year honors by The Ring and the Boxing Writers Association of America for his acclaimed first bout with José Luis Castillo.

Corrales was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2024.

Early life
Corrales was born in Columbia, South Carolina to a Colombian father, Diego Corrales Sr. and a Mexican mother. Corrales' early life was filled with violence; he was raised in the Oak Park section of Sacramento, was involved with street gangs at age 13, and witnessed his best friend's death via drive-by shooting. Corrales had a degree in culinary arts. He trained at "Sac Pal" (Sacramento Police Athletic League) Boxing Gym.

Amateur career
Corrales compiled an amateur boxing record of 105-12. In 1994, he took second place at the United States Amateur Championships, losing to Frankie Carmona on points in the featherweight final. He reached the first round of the featherweight bracket at the 1995 Pan American Games, losing to Arnaldo Mesa. At the 1995 World Championships, he lost out on a medal after losing to Marco Rudolph in the lightweight bracket.

Corrales vs. Mayweather
On January 20, 2001, Corrales challenged Ring No. 2 ranked Super Featherweight and #7 Pound-For-Pound Floyd Mayweather Jr. for the WBC super featherweight title and recorded his first knockdown and first loss. In the bout, Mayweather knocked down Corrales five times (three times in the seventh round and twice in the tenth). After the fifth knockdown, Corrales' corner stopped the fight, despite Corrales' protests.

Shortly after the Mayweather fight, Corrales served 14 months in prison after opting for a plea bargain on charges he faced for abusing his pregnant wife, Maria.

Corrales vs. Casamayor I & II
In 2003, Corrales returned to the ring. After easily winning four fights, Corrales fought against Ring No. 1 ranked Super Featherweight Joel Casamayor. After the sixth round, the fight was stopped because of a deep cut inside of Corrales' mouth. On March 6, 2004, there was a rematch for the vacant WBO super featherweight title. Corrales won by close split decision.

Corrales vs. Freitas
On August 7, 2004, Corrales fought former two-time Super Featherweight champion and current WBO Lightweight champion, Acelino Freitas, who came into the bout unbeaten. Corrales won the fight, via TKO in the tenth round, making Corrales a two weight champion. Freitas won the early rounds, but by the later rounds he was visibly tired and began to be caught by Corrales. After rising from his third knockdown, Freitas walked away from the referee and quit.

Corrales vs. Castillo I
On May 7, 2005, Corrales defeated WBC and Ring Lightweight champion José Luis Castillo via TKO in the tenth round, giving Corrales his fourth title in 2 weight classes. The fight is almost universally regarded as the best fight of 2005. Both men stood in front of each other, battering each other with hard combinations and power punches throughout the entire fight. Finally, in the tenth round, Castillo knocked Corrales down. Seconds later, Castillo knocked Corrales down again. Corrales managed to beat the count, and, after a point was taken away for excessive spitting out of the mouthpiece, Corrales connected with a punch that Castillo later called "a perfect right hand." Corrales then trapped Castillo against the ropes and landed numerous punches, causing the referee, Tony Weeks, to stop the fight.

Corrales vs. Castillo II
A rematch between Corrales and Castillo occurred on October 8, 2005. On the day before the fight, Castillo weighed-in 3½ lb over the 135 lb lightweight limit. Since Castillo did not make the weight, the fight became a non-title bout. The two fighters continued with the same fighting style that they had used in the first fight, trading inside punches throughout the first three rounds. Early in the fourth round, Castillo knocked down Corrales with a left hook to his chin. Corrales wobbled to his feet at the referee's count of ten, causing the fight to end.

Corrales vs. Castillo III, dubbed "The War to Settle the Score," had been scheduled for February 4, 2006, but it was postponed because of a rib injury that Corrales suffered while training. The fight was rescheduled for June 3, 2006. At the weigh-in, however, Corrales weighed the 135 lb lightweight limit whereas Castillo weighed 139½ lb—causing the fight to be cancelled. Corrales later sued Castillo for punitive damages.

Corrales vs. Casamayor III
Corrales was scheduled to defend his lightweight title in a third bout against Joel Casamayor on October 7, 2006. However, Corrales weighed in 5 pounds over the limit. He was given two hours to shed five pounds, but came back at 139 pounds. Corrales would have been stripped of the title if he had won the bout, but Casamayor defeated him by split decision for the WBC and The Ring lightweight titles.

On April 7, 2007, fighting in the welterweight division, Corrales lost a unanimous decision to Joshua Clottey. Corrales was dropped in rounds 9 and 10 and lost by the scores of 97–90, 98–89 and 100–87.

Prison
Corrales served 14 months in the Deuel Vocational Institution, a correctional facility in San Joaquin County, California, after being convicted of domestic battery on his then pregnant girlfriend.

Death
On May 7, 2007, exactly two years to the day after his first fight with Castillo, Corrales was killed in a three-vehicle accident near his Las Vegas home. Corrales was riding a 2007 Suzuki GSXR 1000 motorcycle, traveling northbound on Fort Apache Road in the southwest part of the Las Vegas Valley when he struck the back of a car and was thrown more than 100 feet into oncoming traffic and struck by another vehicle. An ambulance was called by the witnesses at the scene, Corrales was rushed to a hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival. Las Vegas police spokesman Sgt. Tracy McDonald said: "The accident occurred at approximately 7:30 p.m. PDT." McDonald could not say how fast the motorcycle was traveling. Corrales' blood alcohol content was 0.25 at the time of the crash, approximately 3 times the legal limit for Nevada.

title: Diego Corrales


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User:Mat Dillon

A wikipedia user and graduate of Randolph-Macon College with a degree in History. Mat writes in his spare time, most notably he writes a serial series about his fictious alter-ego Ace McGaven.

title: User:Mat Dillon


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File:UFOObsession.jpg

Fair use in Obsession (UFO album)
Though this image is subject to copyright, its use is covered by the U.S. fair use laws because:
 * 1) It's a low resolution copy of a CD/album cover.
 * 2) It doesn't limit the copyright owner's rights to sell the CD/album in any way, in fact, it may encourage sales.
 * 3) Because of the low resolution, copies could not be used to make illegal copies of the album artwork on another CD.
 * 4) The image is itself a subject of discussion in the article or used in the infobox thereof.
 * 5) The image on the cover is significant because it was made by a famous artist.

Source

 * 1) Derived from a digital capture (scan/photo) of the album/CD cover (creator of this digital version is irrelevant as the copyright in all equivalent images is still held by the same party). Copyright held by the record company or the artist. Claimed as fair use regardless.

title: File:UFOObsession.jpg


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Supreme Court of Texas

The Supreme Court of Texas is the court of last resort for civil matters (including juvenile delinquency cases, which are categorized as civil under the Texas Family Code) in the U.S. state of Texas. A different court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, is the court of last resort in criminal matters.

The Court has its seat at the Supreme Court Building on the State Capitol grounds in Austin, Texas.

The Texas Supreme Court consists of a Chief Justice and eight justices. All nine positions are elected, with a term of office of six years and no term limit.

The Texas Supreme Court was established in 1846 to replace the Supreme Court of the Republic of Texas. It meets in downtown Austin, Texas in an office building near the Texas State Capitol.

Regulation of the practice of law in Texas courts
By statute, the Texas Supreme Court has administrative control over the State Bar of Texas, an agency of the judiciary. The Texas Supreme Court has the sole authority to license attorneys in Texas. It also appoints the members of the Board of Law Examiners which, under instructions of the Supreme Court, administers the Texas bar exam. The Court has the last word in attorney disciplinary proceedings brought by the Commission for Lawyer Discipline, a committee of the State Bar of Texas, but rarely exercises discretionary review in such cases. The Supreme Court accepts fewer than 100 cases per year to be decided on the merits. In addition to its adjudicatory and administrative functions, the Supreme Court promulgates, and occasionally revises, court rules of procedure, which include the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure (TRCP), the Texas Rules of Evidence (TRE), and the Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure (TRAP).

Unique procedural aspects
The Texas Supreme Court is the only state supreme court in the United States in which the manner in which it denies discretionary review can actually imply approval or disapproval of the merits of the lower court's decision and in turn may affect the geographic extent of the precedential effect of that decision. In March 1927, the Texas Legislature enacted a law directing the Texas Supreme Court to summarily refuse to hear applications for writs of error when it believed the Court of Appeals opinion correctly stated the law. Thus, since June 1927, over 4,100 decisions of the Texas Courts of Appeals have become valid binding precedent of the Texas Supreme Court itself because the high court refused applications for writ of error rather than denying them and thereby signaled that it approved of their holdings as the law of the state.

While Texas's unique practice saved the state supreme court from having to hear relatively minor cases just to create uniform statewide precedents on those issues, it also makes for lengthy citations to the opinions of the Courts of Appeals, since the subsequent writ history of the case must always be noted (e.g., no writ, writ refused, writ denied, etc.) in order for the reader to determine at a glance whether the cited opinion is binding precedent only in the district of the Court of Appeals in which it was decided, or binding precedent for the entire state. Citations to cases from the Houston-based Courts of Appeals are also longer than others because they require identification of the appellate district number -- [1st Dist.] or [14th Dist.] -- in addition to the name of the city.

Structure of the court and membership
The Texas Supreme Court consists of a Chief Justice and eight justices. All positions are elective. While the chief has special administrative responsibilities, each member has one vote and may issue a dissenting or concurring opinion. Granted cases are assigned to justices' chambers for opinion authorship by draw. Grants require four votes. Judgments are rendered by majority vote. Per curiam opinions may be issued if at least six justices agree. Petitions for review are automatically denied after 30 days unless at least one justice pulls them off the metaphorical conveyor belt.

To serve on the court, a candidate must be at least 35 years of age, a citizen of Texas, licensed to practice law in Texas, and must have practiced law (or have been a lawyer and a judge of a court of record together) for at least ten years. The Clerk of the Court, currently Blake A. Hawthorne, is appointed by the justices and serves a four-year term, which is renewable.

All members of the Texas Supreme Court typically belong to the same party because all are elected in statewide races, rather than by the electorates of smaller appellate districts, as the justices on the intermediate appellate courts are. Although there are fourteen such courts, the state is geographically divided into thirteen. Two appellate courts (the 1st and the 14th, sitting in Houston) serve coextensive districts covering ten counties, including Harris County. Recent proposals to reorganize the Texas appellate court system by consolidating districts, and creating a specialty court of appeals for government-entity cases, failed in the Texas legislature's 2021 regular session.

Judicial selection: appointments and elections
All members of the court are elected to six-year terms in statewide partisan elections. Because their terms are staggered, only some of the justices are up for re-election in any one election cycle. When a vacancy arises, the Governor of Texas appoints a replacement, subject to Senate confirmation, to serve out the unexpired term until December 31 after the next general election. The initial term of tenure is therefore often less than six years. Most of the current justices were originally appointed either by former Governor Rick Perry or by the current Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, who is himself a former member of the court.

Like the judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, all members of the Texas Supreme Court are currently Republicans.

The most recent appointees are Evan Young, Rebeca Huddle, Jane Bland, Jimmy Blacklock, and Brett Busby.

Prior public service of incumbents
Brett Busby and Jane Bland are former Court of Appeals justices from Houston, whose re-election bids failed in November 2018 when Democrats won all of the judicial races in that election. Blacklock previously served Governor Greg Abbott as general counsel. Huddle was a justice on the First Court of Appeals in Houston.

Blacklock replaced Don Willett, who now sits on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appellate court that hears appeals from federal district courts in Texas. Busby succeeds Phil Johnson, who retired in 2018, and was sworn in on  March 20, 2019. Jane Bland was appointed in September 2019 to fill the vacancy left by Jeff Brown, who resigned from the court to accept appointment to a U.S. district court bench. Rebeca Huddle was appointed in October 2020 to replace Paul Green, who retired from the Court on August 31, 2020. Eva Guzman, the second-most senior member of the Court at the time, resigned on June 11, 2021. She is currently challenging Attorney General Ken Paxton in the GOP primary for that office. The vacancy created by Guzman's resignation was filled by Evan Young's appointment on November 10, 2021.

Position designations and seniority
The position of Chief Justice is designated Place 1 and is currently held by Nathan Hecht, the longest-serving member of the Court. He succeeded Wallace B. Jefferson, who is now a frequent advocate before the high court on behalf of private clients, as are several other former members of the Court. The other eight position numbers have no special significance except for identification purposes on the ballot. Informally, justices are ranked by seniority, and their profiles appear on the Court's website in that order. Unlike their counterparts on the U.S. Supreme Court, the official title of incumbents holding Place 2 through Place 9 is Justice, rather than Associate Justice. Their counterparts on the Court of Criminal Appeals, however, use the title Judge.

Women on the court
Hortense Sparks Ward, who became the first woman to pass the Texas Bar Exam in 1910, was appointed Special Chief Justice of an all-female Texas Supreme Court 15 years later. All of the court's male justices recused themselves from Johnson v. Darr, a 1924 case involving the Woodmen of the World, and, since nearly every member of the Texas Bar was a member of that fraternal organization, paying personal insurance premiums that varied with the claims decided against it, no male judges or attorneys could be found to hear the case. After ten months of searching for suitable male replacements to decide the case, Governor Pat Neff decided on January 1, 1925, to appoint a special court composed of three women. This court, consisting of Ward, Hattie Leah Henenberg, and Ruth Virginia Brazzil, met for five months and ultimately ruled in favor of Woodmen of the World.

On July 25, 1982, Ruby Kless Sondock became the court's first regular female justice, when she was appointed to replace Justice James G. Denton who had died of a heart attack. Sondock served the remainder of Denton's term, which ended on December 31, 1982, but did not seek election to the Supreme Court in her own right. Rose Spector became the first woman elected to the court in 1992 and served until 1998 when she was defeated by Harriet O'Neill.

Following the recent departure of Eva Guzman, the Texas Supreme Court currently has three women members. One of them served as a family court judge in Fort Worth (Lehrmann), the second (Bland) was a district judge in the civil trial division of the Harris County district courts before she was appointed to the intermediate court of appeals, and the third (Huddle) previously served on an intermediate court of appeals in Houston. As of September 2019, women jurists filled almost half of the 80 intermediate appellate positions. Some of the fourteen intermediate courts of appeals have female majorities. The Fourth Court of Appeals, based in San Antonio, is composed entirely of women.

Justice Eva Guzman resigned from Place 9 effective Friday, June 11, 2021 at 3 PM after delivering a final dissenting opinion in the morning.

Supreme Court committees
Judicial Committee on Information Technology (JCIT)

Created in 1997 JCIT was established to set standards and guidelines for the systematic implementation and integration of information technology into the trial and appellate courts in Texas.

JCIT approaches this mission by providing a forum for state-local, inter-branch, and public-private collaboration, and development of policy recommendations for the Supreme Court of Texas. Court technology, and the information it carries, are sprawling topics, and Texas is a diverse state with decentralized funding and decision-making for trial court technology. JCIT provides a forum for discussion of court technology and information projects. With this forum, JCIT reaches out to external partners such as the Conference of Urban Counties, the County Information Resource Agency, Texas.gov, and TIJIS (Texas Integrated Justice Information Systems), and advises or is consulted by the Office of Court Administration on a variety of projects.

Three themes consistently recur in the JCIT conversation: expansion and governance of electronic filing; the evolution and proliferation of court case management systems; and the evolution and governance of technology standards for reporting and sharing information across systems in civil, family, juvenile, and criminal justice.

The Founding Chair of JCIT from 1997 to 2009 was Peter S. Vogel, a partner at Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP in Dallas, and since 2009 the JCIT Chair has been Justice Rebecca Simmons.

2020
Two members of the Court (Chief Justice Hecht and Justice Boyd) were up for re-election in 2020, and two more (Busby and Bland) were on the ballot to seek voter approval to serve out the remainder of their respective unexpired terms, following their appointment to supreme court vacancies by Governor Abbott. Although there was some speculation about Texas turning blue in the November 3, 2020 general elections, all GOP candidates in statewide races won, including the four Supreme Court incumbents.

2018
While Republican incumbents suffered massive defeats in the Courts of Appeals on November 6, 2018, bringing about a switch of majorities from Republicans to Democrats in Dallas, Houston, and Austin, the three Republican incumbents on the Texas Supreme Court who faced the entire Texas electorate in statewide races won comfortably.

Incumbent John Devine prevailed over his opponent R.K. Sandill, a sitting district court judge of Asian-American descent in Houston, with 53.75% of the vote and secured a second term. Justice Jeff Brown beat off a challenge by Democratic candidate Kathy Cheng (who unlike her fellow Democratic challengers did not have comparable judicial experience) with the same vote margin. The high court's most recent appointed member at the time, Jimmy Blacklock, defeated Steven Kirkland, who like Sandill served as a district court judge in Houston, with 53.17% of the vote. Neither Sandill nor Kirkland were up for reelection that year.

Justice Blacklock faced the electorate for the first time, having recently been appointed. Blacklock was Governor Abbott's replacement for Justice Don Willett, who ascended to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals before his term on the Texas Supreme Court had expired, thus creating a vacancy and an opportunity for the Governor to fill it with an already-vetted candidate of his own.

All appellate court races were clearly driven by party-line voting. That worked in favor of Republican incumbents at the statewide level as usual, but against Republican incumbents in the courts of appeals, whose members are each elected from one of fourteen appellate districts. Some of those districts favored Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections, which entailed heavy Republican losses at the trial court level likewise.

Under the leadership of Governor Greg Abbott Texas Republicans have since moved to change the way Texas selects judges and justices in the major metropolitan jurisdictions. Their legislative initiative to amend the Texas constitution to forestall Democratic gains in third branch of government was unsuccessful, but a commission was formed to look at alternative selection methods.

2016
The six-year terms of office of the members of the Texas Supreme Court are staggered. Three Republican incumbents—Green, Guzman, and Lehrmann—were up for reelection in 2016 and won easily, as was expected, given the statewide nature of their electoral constituency in a Red state. Debra Lehrmann had been challenged by Michael Massengale, then a justice on the First Court of Appeals in Houston, in the Republican primary for not being conservative enough with respect to med-mal suits. Massengale later lost his re-election bid for the First Court of Appeals position to a Democrat, Richard Hightower, in the Democratic sweep of the intermediate courts of appeals in November 2018.

2014
Texas is one of seven states that elects Supreme Court justices on partisan ballots. Four justices of the Texas Supreme Court faced re-election in 2014. Three of the four sitting Supreme Court justices, Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, Justice Jeff Brown and Justice Phil Johnson, were required to defeat challengers in a March primary before the general election in November. The candidates challenging the incumbent Supreme Court justices, according to reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission, were recruited for the election and funded by a Houston plaintiff lawyer and Ali Davari, owner of two strip clubs: Sexy City and Erotic Zone.

Texas for Lawsuit Reform commented on the Texas election by saying, "Plaintiff trial lawyers are making an unprecedented attempt to regain the control of the Supreme Court that they enjoyed in the 1970s and 1980s, when Texas was known as 'The Lawsuit Capitol of the World.'" Also, an airing of Sixty Minutes entitled Justice for Sale gave a devastating critique of the Texas Supreme Court. Houston plaintiff lawyer Mark Lanier, funded the bulk of the campaign to remove the Texas Supreme Court and business groups. Funding was disclosed in an article titled "Plaintiff Trial Lawyers Attempt to Distort Role of Judges and Juries".

In the years preceding the Texas Judicial Election, Lanier had become a vocal critic of the Texas Supreme Court after the Supreme Court reversed his signature trial verdict against Merck & Co. on behalf of a widow whose husband died after taking Vioxx. After Lanier suffered a second high-profile loss of a Vioxx case, in which the Fourteenth Court of Appeals in Houston concluded in MERCK & CO., INC. v. Ernst, a wrongful death case by a widow, that Lanier failed to show that the ingestion of Vioxx caused the death of his client's spouse. Lanier's publicly criticized the Texas Supreme Court stating that it employs "a simpleton approach that basically white washes the trial, ignores the evidence, and is very conclusion based".

Lanier responded to the appellate setbacks in a press release:

"Activist judges are protecting corporate executives and stripping away the rights of widows and every other victim of corporate misconduct…This decision was handed down by a group of judges who regularly accept campaign contributions from law firms representing corporations that appear in their courts. We will appeal this decision to the United States Supreme Court if necessary." All judicial challengers recruited and funded by the Texas plaintiff lawyers lost to the incumbent Texas Supreme Court justices who won the 2014 Texas election.

title: Supreme Court of Texas


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John R. Ross

John Robert "Haj" Ross (born May 7, 1938) is an American poet and linguist. He played a part in the development of generative semantics (as opposed to interpretive semantics) along with George Lakoff, James D. McCawley, and Paul Postal. He was a professor of linguistics at MIT from 1966 to 1985 and has worked in Brazil, Singapore and British Columbia, and until spring 2021, he taught at the University of North Texas.

Ross's 1967 MIT dissertation is a landmark in syntactic theory and documents in great detail Ross's discovery of syntactic islands.

Ross is known for his onomastic fecundity; he has coined many new terms describing syntactic phenomena, including copula switch, gapping, heavy NP shift, myopia, the penthouse principle, pied piping, scrambling, siamese sentences, sluicing, slifting, and sloppy identity. In linguistics more generally, Ross popularized the use of the term squib to refer to a short scholarly article.

Biography
As a student, Ross was exposed to many influential figures within the field. Ross was a student of Bernard Bloch, Samuel Martin and Rulon Wells at Yale University; Zellig Harris, Henry Hiz, Henry Hoenigswald and Franklin Southworth at the University of Pennsylvania; and Roman Jakobson, Noam Chomsky, Morris Halle, Paul Postal, Edward Klima and Hu Matthews at MIT. Ross met Lakoff in 1963 and began collaborating with him especially on work by and influenced by Postal. He was a professor of linguistics at MIT from 1966 to 1985 and has worked in Brazil, Singapore and British Columbia.

Until Spring 2021, he taught at the University of North Texas and his class offerings there included Linguistics and Literature, Syntax, Field Methods, History of English, Semantics and Pragmatics; he also oversaw U.N.T.'s Doctorate in Poetics program.

Relating to syntactic islands, he also coined the terms "left-branch condition", "complex-np constraint", "coordinate structure constraint", and "sentential subject constraint". In phonology, he suggested the term conspiracy to Charles Kisseberth.

Like Roman Jakobson, Ross analyzes poetry using linguistics (see poetics).

Works

 * Ross, John R. (1966). A proposed rule of tree-pruning. In Harvard Computation Laboratory Report to the National Science Foundation on Mathematical linguistics and automatic translation (No. NSF-17). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Computation Laboratory.
 * Ross, John R. (1966). Relativization in extraposed clauses. In Harvard Computation Laboratory Report to the National Science Foundation on Mathematical linguistics and automatic translation (No. NSF-17). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Computation Laboratory.
 * Ross, John R. (1967). Constraints on variables in syntax. (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology). (Published as Ross 1986). (Available online at http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/15166).
 * Ross, John R. (1967). On the cyclic nature of English pronominalization. In To honor Roman Jakobson: Essays on the occasion of his seventieth birthday (No. 3, pp. 1669–1682). The Hague: Mouton.
 * Ross, John R. (1969). Auxiliaries as main verbs. In W. Todd (Ed.), Studies in philosophical linguistics (Series 1). Evanston, IL: Great Expectations Press.
 * Ross, John R. (1970). On declarative sentences. In R. A. Jacobs & P. S. Rosenbaum (Eds.), Readings in English transformational grammar (pp. 222–272). Washington: Georgetown University Press.
 * Ross, John R. (1970). Gapping and the order of constituents. In M. Bierwisch & Karl E. Heidolph (Eds.), Progress in linguistics. The Hague: Mouton.
 * Ross, John R. (1972) Act. In Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman (Eds.), Semantics of Natural Languages, D. Reidel and Company, Dordrecht, Holland, pp. 70–126.
 * Ross, John R. (1972). The category squish: Endstation Hauptwort. In Paul M. Peranteau, Judith N. Levi, Gloria C. Phares (Eds.), Proceedings of the Eighth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, pp. 316–328.
 * Ross, John R. (1972). Doubl-ing. In J. Kimball (Ed.), Syntax and semantics (Vol. 1, pp. 157–186). New York: Seminar Press.
 * Ross, John R. (1972). A reanalysis of English word stress (part I). In Michael K. Brame (Ed.), Contributions to generative phonology. Austin: University of Texas Press.
 * Ross, John R. (1973). Slifting. In Maurice Gross and Marcel Schützenberger (Eds.), The Formal Analysis of Natural Languages, Mouton and Company, 's Gravenhage, Holland, pp. 133–172.
 * Ross, John R. (1973). The Penthouse Principle and the order of constituents. In Claudia Corum et al. (Eds.), You Take the High Node and I'll Take the Low Node, Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, pp. 397–422.
 * Ross, Haj (1982). The sound of meaning. (1982). In Linguistics in the Morning Calm, edited by the Linguistic Society of Korea, Hanshin Publishing Company, Seoul, Korea, pp. 275–290.
 * Ross, Haj (1984). Inner islands. In Claudia Brugman and Monica Macauley et al. (Eds.) Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley Linguistics Society, University of California, Berkeley, pp. 258 – 265.
 * Ross, John R. (1986). Infinite syntax!. Norwood, NJ: ABLEX, ISBN 0-89391-042-2.
 * Ross, Haj (1995) Defective noun phrases. In Audra Dainora, Rachel Hemphill, Barbara Lukas, Barbara Need and Sheri Pargman (Eds.) (eds.), Proceedings of the Thirty-First Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, pp. 398–440.
 * Ross, Haj (2000) The frozenness of pseudoclefts – towards an inequality-based syntax. In Arika Okrent and John P. Boyle (Eds.), Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, pp. 385–426.
 * Ross, John R. (2004). Siamese sentences – a first look at a parallel construction. In Mary Andronis, Erin Debenport, Anne Pycha, and Keiko Yoshimura (Eds), Proceedings of the Thirty-Eighth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. pp. 569–584.

Collaborations

 * Cooper, William E. and Ross, John R. (1975). Word order. In Robin E. Grossman et al. (eds.), Papers from the Parasession on Functionalism, Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, pp. 63–111.
 * Lakoff, George; & Ross, John R. (1966). Criterion for verb phrase constituency. In Harvard Computation Laboratory Report to the National Science Foundation on Mathematical Linguistics and Automatic Translation (No. NSF-17). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Computation Laboratory.
 * Lakoff, George; & Ross, John R. (1976). Is deep structure necessary?. In J. D. McCawley (ed.), Syntax and Semantics 7 (pp. 159–164).

title: John R. Ross