1. Home
  2. Centers and Institutes
  3. Center on Civil Justice
  4. Welcome Chief Justice Nathan Hecht

NYU School of Law Welcomes Chief Justice Nathan Hecht as Distinguished Judicial Fellow

justice hecht

Thursday, March 13, 2025

Dear Law School community:

I am delighted to announce that Chief Justice Nathan Hecht will join NYU School of Law as a Distinguished Judicial Fellow for the 2025-26 academic year. He will be affiliated with our Center on Civil Justice. 

Chief Justice Hecht is one of the most respected jurists in the United States. He served on the Supreme Court of Texas for 36 years—longer than any other justice in the Court’s history—before retiring as Chief Justice on December 31, 2024. First elected to the Court as a Justice in 1988, he was re-elected four times and then twice as Chief Justice, in 2014 and 2020. Hecht earlier served on the Texas Court of Appeals and the District Court in Dallas.

Throughout his tenure, Chief Justice Hecht championed efforts to expand access to justice, ensuring that Texans of limited means can obtain essential civil legal services. He also played a key role in modernizing Texas’s rules of judicial administration, practice, and procedure. Nationally, he served on the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules of the Judicial Conference of the US and was the longest-serving past president of the Conference of Chief Justices.

Before joining the bench, Chief Justice Hecht worked as a partner at a law firm in Dallas, clerked for Judge Roger Robb of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, and served as a Lieutenant in the US Navy Reserve’s Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Council Member and Life Member of the American Law Institute, and a member of the Texas Philosophical Society. 

Chief Justice Hecht earned a BA in philosophy from Yale University and a JD from Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law. He is married to Priscilla Richman, a Judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

We look forward to welcoming Chief Justice Hecht to our community. Please join me in extending him a warm welcome.

Troy McKenzie