Justice Nathan L. Hecht was elected to the Texas Supreme Court in 1988 and re-elected in 1994, 2000 and 2006. He is the senior Texas appellate judge in active service.
Throughout his service on the Court, Justice Hecht has overseen revisions to the rules of administration, practice and procedure in Texas courts. In 2000, he was appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States to the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules for the Judicial Conference of the United States, on which he served until 2006. Justice Hecht is also the Supreme Court's liaison to the Texas Access to Justice Commission and oversees the Court's efforts to help provide basic civil legal services to Texans living in poverty.
Justice Hecht began his judicial service in 1981, when he was appointed to the 95th District Court of Dallas County. He was elected to that bench in 1982 and re-elected in 1984. In l986, he was elected to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas at Dallas, where he served until his election to the Supreme Court.
Justice Hecht earned his B.A. at Yale University with honors in philosophy, and graduated cum laude from the Southern Methodist University School of Law, where he was elected to Order of the Coif and an editor for the Southwestern Law Journal. He served as law clerk to Judge Roger Robb of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He also served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve JAGC. He practiced law in the area of general litigation with the Dallas firm of Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, and was a shareholder in that firm before his appointment of the bench.
Justice Hecht is a member of the American Law Institute, the Texas Philosophical Society, and a Fellow of the American, Texas, and Dallas Bar Foundations. He received the Southern Methodist University School of Law Distinguished Alumni Award for Judicial Service in 2000, and the Hatton W. Sumners Foundation Distinguished Public Service Award in 2004. He has taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
His term ends December 31, 2012.
Updated: 26-Oct-2011
