Page 178 - The First Fifty Years

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172 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW

appointment], but I just was not willing to . . . .
What I didn’t know was that the press was already

there . . . . [T]hen they said, “The Governor wants to
see you.”

So I went in, I met him for just a minute, and he
said, “We’ve got to go now. The press is here.”

And that was it. I mean that was the fastest thing
I’ve even seen.83
Subsequently, upon the retirement of the Court’s Chief Justice,
Sondock was offered the opportunity to fill out the remaining two
years of his term as Chief herself. Preferring her work as a trial
judge, however, she returned home to Houston and ran
unopposed for election to the district court.
The irony is that, had Sondock served on Houston Law
Review (and clearly, as valedictorian of her class, she would have
qualified), HLR could have joined the Law Center in claiming the
distinction of having placed the first woman on the Texas
Supreme Court (as well as its first Hispanic Justice).84 But she
did not, and the journal could not. Houston Law Review was
founded the year after Ruby Sondock’s graduation.
The remaining three members of the judges panel all did
serve on HOUS. L. REV. and of course have interesting stories of
their own. Judge Cathleen Cochran, the second woman (and
UHLC’s first) to serve on the Court of Criminal Appeals, the
court of last resort for all criminal matters in Texas, has
appeared earlier in these essays85 and will take a final bow in the
concluding section of the present narrative.
Justice Evelyn Keyes followed a somewhat circuitous route
to the bench, earning Ph.D.s in English and Philosophy from the
University of Texas and Rice University respectively, before
receiving her J.D. from the University of Houston, then
practicing privately and serving as a special assistant attorney
general before appointment to the Texas Court of Appeals, First
District (Houston) in 2002.
Justice Jeff Brown’s ascent to the bench followed perhaps
the most traditional path to judicial service, beginning with
practice at a prominent local law firm founded in 1840 and
continuing with trial court service before appointment to the
Court of Appeals’ 14th District (also in Houston) in 2007. He was
appointed to the Supreme Court of Texas in September 2013 to
fill the vacancy created when Justice Nathan L. Hecht was
appointed Chief Justice. Judges Cochran, Keyes, and Brown all
have published in Houston Law Review.86
Regarding approaches to judging, the panel participants had