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Judging Priscilla: Priscilla Owen''s opponents attack her conservative views, but the more troubling issue is whether she disregards precedent.

Article Excerpt
POOR PRISCILLA OWEN. The embattled Texas Supreme Court justice whose appointment to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has stalled for the second time over charges of "ultraconservative judicial activism" now finds herself in the middle of another controversy, this one the oil-patch equivalent of a range war. It's the landowners versus the oil-and-gas producers who pay them royalties-and if you don't know how vicious this feud can be, you haven't seen the 1956 classic Texas film Giant, with Rock Hudson as cattle baron Bick Benedict and James Dean as new-rich producer Jet Rink. The legal battle involves the opinion favoring producers that Owen wrote in August in an oil-and-gas case known as Natural Gas Pipeline v. Pool. This flare-up and an earlier one over an Owen opinion with the same pro-producer outcome in a ease called HECI v. Neel have passed unnoticed in the political brouhaha over her appointment, because they involve an obscure area of the law that, on the surface, is just a light between rich folks and richer folks. But the issue is the same as in her confirmation battle: Is she a judicial activist who rules according to her ideology rather than the law?

In the political arena, the criticism of Owen comes from liberal groups such as People tot the American Way, the National Organization for Women, and the NAACP, and it involves her stands on hot-button issues like abortion and discrimination. "She reflexively favors manufacturers over consumers, employers over...

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