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Why It's So Easy to Hate Ken Paxton
Link to tweet
In short, Paxton is the guy who unites his neighbors in a shared hope that he will get what’s coming to him. Usually, those hopes are disappointed.
There’s some chance this time, however, that prayers will be answered. Paxton has already been kicked around publicly by the courts; now he is facing state and federal corruption probes, Texas Bar proceedings for alleged legal-ethics violations, and (perhaps worst of all) he has now begun to reek of political vulnerability.
Paxton’s record as a what I will call, for lack of a better term, “lawyer” is distinctly mixed. In the past year, Paxton’s two highest-profile lawsuits turned out badly for him. In November, he asked the Supreme Court to invalidate the entire Affordable Care Act on the grounds that it used to have an individual mandate but doesn’t anymore. In January, he went directly to the Supreme Court to ask the Justices to install Donald Trump for a second term.
In both cases, the Roberts Court sent him packing under the same rationale—Paxton and Texas, the Justices wrote, lack “standing to sue.” Standing is what I call the “what the hell business is it of yours?” principle. In order to get into federal court, a party has to do more than come up with a theory about why someone else has broken the law; the party has to show that the violation of law hurt him or her in particular. So what if the fence is an inch too high? Does it cut off your view, or shade your garden, or do anything at all to you? Unlike in politics, in federal courts hating your neighbor isn’t good enough; you must also suffer a “concrete and particularized” injury.
Particularization hasn’t gone so well for Paxton lately. His attempt to overturn the election was based on a claim that the state governments in four states carried by Biden had not followed their state constitutions and laws in conducting their presidential elections—the equivalent, in other words, of dragging up a lawn chair to root for one side or another in a neighbor’s marital spat. This novel theory was met with a cold shoulder: “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” the court wrote in a brief order, using legal terms that mean, “Go back inside, hoss.”
There’s some chance this time, however, that prayers will be answered. Paxton has already been kicked around publicly by the courts; now he is facing state and federal corruption probes, Texas Bar proceedings for alleged legal-ethics violations, and (perhaps worst of all) he has now begun to reek of political vulnerability.
Paxton’s record as a what I will call, for lack of a better term, “lawyer” is distinctly mixed. In the past year, Paxton’s two highest-profile lawsuits turned out badly for him. In November, he asked the Supreme Court to invalidate the entire Affordable Care Act on the grounds that it used to have an individual mandate but doesn’t anymore. In January, he went directly to the Supreme Court to ask the Justices to install Donald Trump for a second term.
In both cases, the Roberts Court sent him packing under the same rationale—Paxton and Texas, the Justices wrote, lack “standing to sue.” Standing is what I call the “what the hell business is it of yours?” principle. In order to get into federal court, a party has to do more than come up with a theory about why someone else has broken the law; the party has to show that the violation of law hurt him or her in particular. So what if the fence is an inch too high? Does it cut off your view, or shade your garden, or do anything at all to you? Unlike in politics, in federal courts hating your neighbor isn’t good enough; you must also suffer a “concrete and particularized” injury.
Particularization hasn’t gone so well for Paxton lately. His attempt to overturn the election was based on a claim that the state governments in four states carried by Biden had not followed their state constitutions and laws in conducting their presidential elections—the equivalent, in other words, of dragging up a lawn chair to root for one side or another in a neighbor’s marital spat. This novel theory was met with a cold shoulder: “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” the court wrote in a brief order, using legal terms that mean, “Go back inside, hoss.”
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