Priscilla Richman (formerly Priscilla Richman Owen; born October 4, 1954) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as the chief United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She was previously a justice of the Supreme Court of Texas from 1995 to 2005.
Early life and education
Priscilla Richman was born in Palacios, Texas. Her earliest years were spent on her family's farm in Collegeport. She later grew up and went to school in Waco. She worked part-time during high school and college at her stepfather's insurance company. During summers, she returned to Collegeport, working in rice fields and herding cattle.
Richman started college at the University of Texas at Austin and later transferred to Baylor University to be near her family in Waco. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude, from Baylor. She then went to Baylor Law School, where she became editor of the Baylor Law Review and graduated cum laude in 1977, receiving a Juris Doctor. From among approximately 400 examinees, at age 23, she received the highest score on the December 1977 Texas bar examination.
Career
After graduating from law school, Richman joined Andrews & Kurth in Houston, specializing in oil and gas litigation. She made partner at the age of 30. In private practice, Richman handled a broad range of civil matters at the trial and appellate levels. She was admitted to practice before various state and federal trial courts and appellate courts. She is a member of the American Law Institute, the American Judicature Society, the American Bar Association, and a Fellow of the American and Houston Bar Foundations.
Texas Supreme Court
In 1993, after 17 years at Andrews & Kurth, she was asked to run for the Texas Supreme Court as a Republican. She won with 53 percent of the vote, promising to restore integrity and dignity to a court tainted by scandal.
Richman had written articles and lobbied the Texas Legislature to eliminate partisan election of judges, arguing that they hinder the ability of courts to provide impartial justice. When she was up for reelection in 2000, Democrats did not put up an opponent against her, and she was returned to office with 84 percent of the vote, defeating a Libertarian opponent with the help of endorsements from newspapers statewide.
Richman served on the board of Texas Hearing and Service Dogs, which rescues dogs from pounds, provides training for them, and then gives the dogs to disabled people who cannot otherwise afford them. In addition, she was a founding member of the St. Barnabas Episcopal Mission in Austin and has taught Sunday school.
In the mid-1990s, Congress reduced funding for the Legal Services Corporation. Richman was part of a committee that successfully encouraged the Texas Legislature to enact legislation that has resulted in millions of dollars per year in additional funds for providers of legal services to the poor.
Richman served as the Texas Supreme Court's representative on the Court-Annexed Mediation Task Force, working to resolve differences between lawyer and non-lawyer mediators, in order to provide an alternative to expensive courtroom trials. She has been a member of the Gender Bias Reform Implementation Committee and statewide committees regarding legal services to the poor and pro bono legal services.
Richman also served on the boards of advisors of the Houston and Austin Chapters of the Federalist Society. Richman was instrumental in organizing a group known as Family Law 2000 that seeks to find ways to educate parents about the effect that divorce can have on their children and to lessen the adversarial nature of legal proceedings when a marriage is dissolved.