David J. Schenck
Republican Candidate for Justice, Supreme Court, Place 9
Schenck/Photo by Campaign
Question: What is your age?
Answer: 54
Q: What is your educational background? Please list any degrees or certificates earned and any institutions attended.
A: Baylor Law School 1992 (JD) (First in class)
Q: What is your occupation?
A: Justice, Fifth Court of Appeals Dallas since 1/15
Q: If you are a business owner, please list the business or businesses that you own. (If this question is not applicable, please note that below.)
A: N/A
Q: Please list any civic boards or commissions (non-profit, government, union, political, etc.) on which you have served as a board member or equivalent.
A: I am the Chairman of the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct, I have served as Deputy Attorney General for Legal Counsel and Commissioner of the Lottery. I was elected to the American Law Institute in 2018, I am a Barrister in the Patrick Higginbotham Inn of Court
Q: Have you previously held or do you currently hold any elected office? If so, what office(s)?
A: I was appointed to the Fifth Court of Appeals (the state's largest intermediate appellate court) in 2015, and prevailed in the primary and general elections that followed.
Q: If your campaign has any online campaign resources where voters can learn more about you, such as social media accounts or a website, please list them below.
A: www.schenckfortexas.com, facebook is justice david schenck
Q: Why did you decide to run for this office in 2022?
A: I believe the Texas Supreme Court is seriously lacking in geographic diversity, with one exception (Justice Lehrman) the entire court comes from Houston based law firms or Austin. I also believe that serious judicial reforms are both necessary and overdue. Only the Supreme Court is empowered to make them.
Q: If elected, what will be your top three priorities in office?
A: 1. Assuring that Texans have confidence that their judiciary is operating independently and as an effective constitutional check as the Texas Constitution requires
2. Resolving cases on the merits and in accordance with the rule of law, as my record on the 5th court reflects
3. Ethics reforms to (a) acknowledge and actually redress the fact that studies of the general public, lawyers and judges confirm a lack of confidence in the courts' impartiality, and in particular, and (b) to eliminate the chronic appearance of a correlation between certain law firm contributions and results in the supreme court as detailed in the 2001 "pay to play study" and the 2019 Salem Abraham study.
Q: What is an issue you believe has gone overlooked in your race and how will you address it if elected?
A: I do not believe that Justices should be drawn from one region of the state or from a pool of private law firms publicly identified in objective studies that exacerbate, rather than resolve, the chronic appearance concerns that erode confidence in the judicial system.
Q: Why are you the best candidate for voters to support for this position?
A: I am a judge with a proven record as a constitutionalist and conservative adherent to the rule of law, I am board certified in civil appellate law, and I have been clear and direct in addressing concerns about the courts that should matter to voters