How do judges of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Alabama Court of Civil Appeals / Joined 1991 / Served to 1997

Charles A. Thigpen

Judge, Alabama Court of Civil Appeals

Charles A. Thigpen was a Judge of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, who joined the court in 1991. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1941 · age 85
Tenure: 1991–1997 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Alabama Court of Civil Appeals	–	–

Education

The University of Alabama
The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Thigpen authored 586 published opinions for the court (1991–1997), plus 49 dissents and 54 concurrences. Most cited: Phillips v. Phillips (151 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. 426 of these were attributed to Thigpen 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
1993	Phillips v. Phillips	622 So. 2d 410	151
1993	Parrish v. Parrish	617 So. 2d 1036	138
1994	Stack v. Stack· Concurrence†	646 So. 2d 51	113
1995	Willing v. Willing· Dissent†	655 So. 2d 1064	77
1995	State Ex Rel. Shellhouse v. Bentley· Concurrence†	666 So. 2d 517	56
1994	Griggs v. Griggs	638 So. 2d 916	48
1993	Hipps v. Lauderdale County Bd. of Educ.	631 So. 2d 1023	45
1994	C.P. v. M.K.· Concurrence†	667 So. 2d 1357	42
1995	Sizemore v. OWNER-OPERATOR INDEPENDENT DRIVERS ASS'N, INC.	671 So. 2d 674	41
1993	Alexander v. Alexander	625 So. 2d 433	39
1995	Duckett v. Duckett	669 So. 2d 195	35
1994	Woods v. Woods	653 So. 2d 312	35
1996	Dismukes v. Dorsey· Concurrence†	686 So. 2d 298	34
1996	Sartin v. Sartin· Dissent†	678 So. 2d 1181	33
1993	City of Auburn v. Brown· Concurrence†	638 So. 2d 1339	33

Showing the 15 most-cited of 690 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 Alabama Court of Civil Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Charles A. Thigpen on?: Charles A. Thigpen was a Judge of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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