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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Louisiana / Joined 1994 / Active

Bernette J. Johnson

Justice, Supreme Court of Louisiana

Bernette J. Johnson is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, serving since 1994. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1943 · age 83
Tenure: Since 1994 · 31 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1994	Supreme Court of Louisiana	–	–

Education

Spelman College
Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

Judicial Record

In our data, Johnson authored 828 published opinions for the court (1994–2019), plus 201 dissents and 63 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Weaver (700 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. 391 of these were attributed to Johnson 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
2002	State v. Weaver	805 So. 2d 166	700
1998	Evans v. Lungrin	708 So. 2d 731	690
2004	State v. Williams	893 So. 2d 7	506
2000	Duncan v. Kansas City Southern Railway Co.	773 So. 2d 670	334
2008	Denoux v. Vessel Management Services, Inc.	983 So. 2d 84	322
2007	Supreme Services v. Sonny Greer, Inc.	958 So. 2d 634	296
2009	State v. Calloway· Dissent†	1 So. 3d 417	291
2000	Davis v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.	774 So. 2d 84	276
2011	Schultz v. Guoth· Dissent†	57 So. 3d 1002	247
2005	State v. Brown	907 So. 2d 1	245
2005	Champagne v. Ward	893 So. 2d 773	242
1995	Maranto v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.	650 So. 2d 757	216
1995	State v. Silman	663 So. 2d 27	206
2004	Dean v. Southmark Const.	879 So. 2d 112	199
1995	Lewis v. STATE, DEPT. OF TRANSPORTATION & DEV.	654 So. 2d 311	194

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,094 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 Louisiana reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court is Bernette J. Johnson on?: Bernette J. Johnson is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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