12.17.07
Kronberg Excoriates Abbott’s Opinion On Craddick’s Coup
Abbott’s opinion on Craddick ’embarrassing’. Here are a few excerpts:
At 10 p.m. last Friday, Abbott finally released his opinion. It was historical, but one that will be a black mark his career. Abbott ducked the great constitutional issues. In fact, the opinion reads as if Craddick’s lawyers had written it.
Defying every constitutional tradition, Abbott said the speaker is state officer with a fixed two-year term and cannot be removed from his leadership position by the House except by expulsion or impeachment. Expulsion requires a two-thirds vote. Impeachment only requires a majority vote but puts the House in the laughable position of requiring Senate permission to remove its leader.
[…]
Frankly, the opinion is embarrassing. For example, when there is no applicable case law, the AG must look to the actions of other states where similar constitutional issues have been adjudicated.
Instead, Abbott ignores relevant precedent spending pages agonizing over some arcane case regarding the status of an executive branch employee, a hospital superintendent. But he never once mentions the 1871 precedent in which the House actually acted to remove a speaker.
Fortunately, although it reveals a great deal about the attorney general’s political loyalty, Abbott’s endorsement of an imperial speakership is just an opinion, and a fatally flawed one at that.
Good stuff.