Austad leads Hughes in race for 9th District Court 19

Incumbent Judge Jana Austad led challenger James Hughes with 83,157 votes (60.49%) to 53,872 (39.18%) in the race for the 9th District’s 19th Court.

In the 19th Court, the contest was one of experience versus judicial philosophy, with Austad bringing decades of experience as a lawyer and judge in a wide variety of different fields, while Hughes was a self-avowed textualist who said he would ignore external factors to judge each case by the exact legal text itself.

Textualism is defined as an interpretation of the law primarily based on the ordinary meaning of the legal text itself. Little or no consideration is given to factors in the case outside the text, such as why a law was passed or the circumstances that led to the original ruling.