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Thomas Rex Lee
This page is about the Utah Supreme Court justice. If you are looking for information on the former federal judge for the District of South Carolina, please see Thomas Lee.
Thomas Rex Lee was a judge of the Utah Supreme Court. He assumed office on July 19, 2010. He left office on June 30, 2022.
Lee resigned on June 30, 2022 to return to private practice.[1] To learn more about this vacancy, click here.
Lee first became a member of the Utah Supreme Court when he was appointed by Republican Governor Gary Herbert in May 2010 to fill the seat vacated by Michael Wilkins.[2][3]. On June 15, 2010, Utah's Senate Judicial Committee voted 5-0 to approve Lee for confirmation to the court.[4] On June 23, 2010, the Utah Senate unanimously confirmed Lee.[5] He was sworn in on July 19, 2010.[6] To read more about judicial selection in Utah, click here.
Lee was included on President Donald Trump’s (R) June 2018 list of 25 potential Supreme Court nominees to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the court. Trump first released such a list during his 2016 presidential campaign and stated, “This list is definitive and I will choose only from it in picking future Justices of the United States Supreme Court.”[7][8]
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country. As part of this study, we assigned each justice a Confidence Score describing our confidence in the degree of partisanship exhibited by the justices' past partisan behavior, before they joined the court.[9] Lee received a confidence score of Mild Republican.[10] Click here to read more about this study.
Biography
Lee received his B.A. summa cum laude from Brigham Young University in 1988. He earned his J.D. with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School in 1991. Before becoming a member of the supreme court, Lee was a faculty member at Brigham Young University from 1997 to 2010. During this time period, he was also a part-time associate at Howard, Phillips & Anderson. From 1992 to 1997, Lee was an associate at Parr, Waddoups, Brown, Gee & Loveless. Before that, he worked as a law clerk for Judge Harvie Wilkinson in the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Lee has also clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas in the Supreme Court of the United States and served as the deputy assistant attorney general for the United States Department of Justice.[11][12][13]
Lee is the son of former Reagan administration United States Solicitor General Rex Lee. He is also the brother of Republican U.S. Senator Mike Lee.[2]
Elections
2014
Lee was retained to the Supreme Court with 75.5 percent of the vote on November 4, 2014. [14]
Performance evaluations
The Utah Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission, following a 2014 survey, recommended that Justice Lee be Retained. The full report is available here.
2010
Lee was appointed to the Utah Supreme Court by Republican Governor Gary Herbert in May 2010 to fill the seat vacated by Michael Wilkins.[2]
Analysis
Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship (2020)
Last updated: June 15, 2020
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country as of June 15, 2020.
The study presented Confidence Scores that represented our confidence in each justice's degree of partisan affiliation. This was not a measure of where a justice fell on an ideological spectrum, but rather a measure of how much confidence we had that a justice was or had been affiliated with a political party. The scores were based on seven factors, including but not limited to party registration.[15]
The five resulting categories of Confidence Scores were:
- Strong Democrat
- Mild Democrat
- Indeterminate[16]
- Mild Republican
- Strong Republican
This justice's Confidence Score, as well as the factors contributing to that score, is presented below. The information below was current as of June 2020.
Thomas Rex
Lee
Utah
- Partisan Confidence Score:
Mild Republican - Judicial Selection Method:
Assisted appointment through governor controlled judicial nominating commission - Key Factors:
- Was a registered Republican
- Donated less than $2,000 to Republican candidates
- Appointed by a Republican governor
Partisan Profile
Details:
Lee was a registered Republican. He donated $1,250 to Republican candidates. He was appointed by Gov Gary Herbert (R) in 2010. At the time of his appointment, Utah was a Republican trifecta.
Noteworthy cases
Court holds that parents can sue for wrongful death of child after stillbirth
Parents sued in federal court for wrongful death after the mother gave birth to a stillborn child. At the request of the parents, the federal court asked the Utah Supreme Court to resolve the following question under Utah law: “Does Utah Code Ann. § 78-11-6 allow a claim to be made for the wrongful death of an unborn child?” The law in question stated that “a parent or guardian may maintain an action for the death or injury of a minor child when the injury or death is caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another.”[17]
In a divided ruling, a majority of the Utah Supreme Court answered yes, identifying the key issue as the definition of the term "minor child". Justice Lee authored one of the opinions written by the four-justice majority. Justice Lee wrote that Utah law gave parents the right to sue for injuries in utero in cases of live birth. Therefore, he concluded, not allowing suits in the case of stillbirth "would yield perverse incentives that the wrongful death statute cannot reasonably be read to countenance."[17]
Justice Ronald Nehring dissented. He wrote that whether or not Justice Lee's reasoning was accurate, "when the majority’s interpretation of 'minor child' is imported to other statutes utilizing the same term, the absurdities abound." He wrote that the court majority "cites no evidence that the legislature intended such an unreasonably expansive definition of 'minor child' in our wrongful death statute as opposed to the term’s supposedly more limited use in other contexts."[17]
State supreme court judicial selection in Utah
- See also: Judicial selection in Utah
The five justices of the supreme court are selected through assisted appointment. The governor selects a nominee from a list of recommended candidates from a judicial nominating commission. The nominee then must attain approval from the Utah Senate.
New appointees serve for at least three years, after which they must run in a yes-no retention election. If retained, supreme court justices serve subsequent terms of ten years.[18]
Qualifications
To serve on the Utah Supreme Court, a judge must be:
- a citizen of the United States;
- a state resident for at least five years;
- admitted to practice law in the state;
- at least 30 years old; and
- no more than 75 years old.[18]
Chief justice
The chief justice of the supreme court is selected by peer vote. The chief justice of the supreme court serves in that capacity for four years.[18]
Vacancies
When a vacancy occurs on the court, the governor appoints a replacement from a list of seven names recommended by a nominating commission. The nominee then must attain approval from the Utah Senate. New appointees serve for at least three years, after which they must run in a yes-no retention election. If retained, supreme court justices serve subsequent terms of ten years.[18]
The map below highlights how vacancies are filled in state supreme courts across the country.
Possible Donald Trump nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court
2018
Lee was listed by President Donald Trump (R) as a potential Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy announced he would retire from the court effective July 31, 2018.[7] Trump ultimately chose Brett Kavanaugh as the nominee. Click here to learn more.
2017
On November 17, 2017, Lee was included in a third list of individuals from which President Donald Trump would choose to fill vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court.
A White House statement announcing the nominees stated,[19]
| “ |
One year ago, President Donald J. Trump was elected to restore the rule of law and to Make the Judiciary Great Again. Following the successful confirmation of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court of the United States and the nomination of more than seventy Federal judges—including five individuals from his Supreme Court list—President Trump today announced that he is refreshing his Supreme Court list with five additional judges. President Trump will choose a nominee for a future Supreme Court vacancy, should one arise, from this updated list of 25 individuals. The President remains deeply committed to identifying and selecting outstanding jurists in the mold of Justice Gorsuch. These additions, like those on the original list released more than a year ago, were selected with input from respected conservative leaders.[20] |
” |
In a December 2016 study, scholars and attorneys Jeremy Kidd, Riddhi Sohan Dasgupta, Ryan Walter, and James Phillips identified Lee as the most natural successor to Justice Scalia based on a measure of their own design.[21]
Approach to the law
Lee has said, "[T]he role of a judge is to say what the law is, not what it should be. The Utah Supreme Court is not a political body. It does not make law. It interprets and applies the law."[3]
See also
External links
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Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ KSL, "Thomas R. Lee steps down from Utah Supreme Court," accessed June 30, 2022
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 The Salt Lake Tribune, "Guv's choice for state high court earns praise," May 29, 2010
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Deseret News, "BYU law professor nominated to Utah Supreme Court," May 29, 2010
- ↑ The Salt Lake Tribune, "BYU law professor one step closer to filling court vacancy," June 15, 2010
- ↑ Standard-Examiner, "Utah Senate confirms Lee to Utah Supreme Court," June 23, 2010
- ↑ ABC 4, "Clarence Thomas to swear in Lee in Utah," July 9, 2010
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 CBS News, "Trump says Justice Kennedy's replacement will come from list of 25," June 27, 2018
- ↑ FindLaw, "Trump Revises His Supreme Court Picks," September 26, 2016
- ↑ We calculated confidence scores by collecting several data points such as party registration, donations, and previous political campaigns.
- ↑ The five possible confidence scores were: Strong Democrat, Mild Democrat, Indeterminate, Mild Republican, and Strong Republican.
- ↑ BYU Law School, "Faculty Profile of Thomas Lee," archived August 9, 2011
- ↑ Utah Courts, "Associate Chief Justice Thomas R. Lee," accessed September 25, 2014
- ↑ Good4Utah.com, "Herbert nominates Lee to Utah Supreme Court," May 28, 2010
- ↑ Utah Elections, "2014 Candidate Filings," accessed March 27, 2014
- ↑ The seven factors were party registration, donations made to partisan candidates, donations made to political parties, donations received from political parties or bodies with clear political affiliation, participation in political campaigns, the partisanship of the body responsible for appointing the justice, and state trifecta status when the justice joined the court.
- ↑ An Indeterminate score indicates that there is either not enough information about the justice’s partisan affiliations or that our research found conflicting partisan affiliations.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Utah Supreme Court, "Carranza v. United States Opinion," filed December 20, 2011
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 American Judicature Society, "Methods of Judicial Selection," accessed August 20, 2021
- ↑ The White House, "President Donald J. Trump Announces Five Additions to Supreme Court List," November 17, 2017
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Social Science Research Network, "Searching for Justice Scalia: Measuring the 'Scalia-ness' of the next potential member of the U.S. Supreme Court," December 1, 2016
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|---|---|---|---|
| Current judges | Matthew Durrant, Diana Hagen, John A. Pearce, Paige Petersen, Jill Pohlman | ||
| Former judges | Christine Durham, Deno Himonas, Thomas Rex Lee, Ronald E. Nehring | ||
Federal courts:
Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals • U.S. District Court: District of Utah • U.S. Bankruptcy Court: District of Utah
State courts:
Utah Supreme Court • Utah Court of Appeals • Utah District Courts • Utah Juvenile Courts • Utah Justice Courts
State resources:
Courts in Utah • Utah judicial elections • Judicial selection in Utah
