Thomas R. Phillips, retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, served as the Spurgeon E. Bell Distinguished Visiting Professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston and as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University in Dallas during the 2004-2005 academic year, where he taught several courses in federal and state constitutional law.

A native of Dallas, Phillips earned a B.A. from Baylor University in 1971 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1974. He has been awarded honorary doctoral degrees from St. Edward’s University and Texas Tech University.

After law school, Phillips clerked for the Supreme Court of Texas and practiced law in the Houston office of Baker & Botts. From 1981-1988, he served as judge of the 280th District Court in Harris County, Texas.

In 1987, Governor William P. Clements appointed Phillips Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, a position to which he was elected and re-elected in 1988, 1990, 1996 and 2002.

Throughout his judicial tenure, Phillips was an advocate for judicial selection reform and court reorganization and moderation. His peers elected him president of the Conference of Chief Justices in 1997-98, during which time he also chaired the Board of Directors of the National Center for State Courts. Phillips is currently a member of the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform and a director of the American Judicature Society. He previously served on the Federal-State Relations Committee of the Administrative Conference of the United States, the Institutions of Democracy Judicial Branch Commission of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, and the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Lawyers’ Political Contributions and its Commission on the 21st Century Judiciary.

Last year, Phillips received Baylor University’s Price Daniel Distinguished Public Service Award, the Burton Foundation’s first annual Professionalism in Law Award, Dallas CASA’s Champion of Children Award, and the Texas Equal Access to Justice Commission’s Harold F. Kleinman Award. In previous years, he received St. Mary’s Law School’s Rosewood Gavel Award, the Texas Chamber of Commerce’s Excellence in Government Award, the John Ben Sheppard Public Leadership Forum’s Outstanding Texas Leader Award, and the Houston Young Lawyers Association’s Outstanding Young Lawyer Award. He has been named both a Distinguished Alumnus and Outstanding Young Alumnus of Baylor University. His nomination by Governor Rick Perry to the Texas Historical Commission was recently confirmed by the Texas Senate.

Phillips delivered the William J. Brennan Lecture on State Courts and Social Justice at New York University Law School in 2002, and he was member of the United States Delegation of the Visit of Members of the Supreme Court of the United States to the Court of Justice of the European Communities and other European Courts and Institutions in 1998.

Phillips is married to Lyn Bracewell Phillips, Ph.D., and has a son, Daniel, and a stepson, Thomas Kirkham. He lives in Bastrop, about thirty miles east of Austin.