In this special off-season episode of Rightly Decided, Laura Beth Latimer and Chance Weldon sit down with Judge Kevin Yeary of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Stepping away from standard case breakdowns, the team dives straight into the philosophy, career, and guiding principles of a judge sitting on Texas’s highest criminal court.
From his unexpected shift from civil trial law to his nearly 12-year tenure on the bench, Judge Yeary explains exactly how he approaches the separation of powers and why he believes the judicial branch must stay in its lane.
In This Episode:
- “Opinions Are Not Law”: Judge Yeary breaks down his foundational principle that only the legislature makes law, whereas judicial opinions merely establish subordinate “rules of decision.”
- Separation of Powers & Originalism: A discussion on why judges must resist the cultural evolution of words and stick to the original public meaning of a statute.
- Dusty Dictionaries: How the court utilizes historical dictionaries from the State Law Library to accurately interpret older legal texts.
- The Power of the Dissent: A look at Justice Thomas’s concurrence in Gamble v. United States, Judge Yeary’s dissents, and why writing side opinions is crucial for correcting the law.
- The Inquisitorial Judge: Why the bench shouldn’t blindly rubber-stamp plea deals or “friendly judgments” just because the adversarial parties agree.
- The “Deer Case”: A wild Texas war story involving a prized Hill Country Village buck, a butcher knife, and a massive legal fight over seized property.