To this point. Those who know, will know.
Texas State law prohibits courts of no record in municipalities that have courts of record. However, Austin, which does have a municipal court of record, uses a court of no record to adjudicate petty misdemeanor crimes. The law states, in very plain English, using the words, "shall not," but Austin does it anyway. No fucks given.
I've had plenty of experiences with traffic court in my younger years. It always really pissed me off how people seemed to think that if traffic courts are corrupt as hell it says nothing about the rest of the law. I could not disagree more, but that's the problem isn't it. People don't care and will make any excuse, valid or not, to explain why they don't care.
I would quote the traffic code, the judges manual, case law and the judge wouldn't care. Then again it probably didn't help that in most cases I pointed out that I objected to having my case heard by a commissioner rather than a judge and so refused to use the phrase, "Your Honor" when addressing the commissioner.
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