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 1998 / Served to 2011

Champ Lyons

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

Champ Lyons was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1998. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1940 · age 86
Tenure: 1998–2011 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1998	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

Harvard University
The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Lyons authored 554 published opinions for the court (1998–2011), plus 63 dissents and 151 concurrences. Most cited: Ex Parte Cranman (428 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. 355 of these were attributed to Lyons 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
2000	Ex Parte Cranman	792 So. 2d 392	428
2000	Ex Parte Butts	775 So. 2d 173	311
1999	State v. Property at 2018 Rainbow Drive· Concurrence†	740 So. 2d 1025	275
2004	Blue Cross and Blue Shield v. Hodurski	899 So. 2d 949	236
1999	State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. Slade	747 So. 2d 293	207
2003	Waddell & Reed, Inc. v. UNITED INVEST. LIFE INS. CO.†	875 So. 2d 1143	183
2002	Ex Parte Waldrop· Dissent†	859 So. 2d 1181	166
2008	KGS Steel, Inc. v. McInish· Concurrence†	47 So. 3d 767	150
1998	Sanders v. Empire Fire and Marine Ins. Co.	720 So. 2d 893	150
2000	Fleetwood Enterprises, Inc. v. Bruno· Concurrence†	784 So. 2d 277	149
1999	Delchamps, Inc. v. Bryant	738 So. 2d 824	147
1998	Ex Parte Dan Tucker Auto Sales, Inc.· Concurrence†	718 So. 2d 33	146
2005	Waltman v. Rowell· Concurrence†	913 So. 2d 1083	136
2003	Giambrone v. Douglas	874 So. 2d 1046	134
1998	Ex Parte McNaughton· Concurrence†	728 So. 2d 592	133

Showing the 15 most-cited of 768 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 Champ Lyons on?: Champ Lyons 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.

13 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).