How do judges of the Supreme Court of Alabama reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Alabama / Joined 1868 / Served to 1874

Benjamin F. Safford

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

Benjamin F. Safford was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1868. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1826 · age 200
Tenure: 1868–1874 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1868	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Safford authored 1 published opinion for the court (1872). Most cited: Eslava v. Ames Plow Co. (2 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 1 of these was attributed to Safford by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1872	Eslava v. Ames Plow Co.†	47 Ala. 384	2

Showing the 1 most-cited of 1 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Supreme Court of Alabama reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Benjamin F. Safford on?: Benjamin F. Safford was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

6 years on the Supreme Court of Alabama. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).