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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Texas / Joined 1980 / Served to 1990

C.L. Ray Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

C.L. Ray Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1931 · age 95
Tenure: 1980–1990 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Ray authored 95 published opinions for the court (1981–1990), plus 23 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: Carr v. Brasher (1,433 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. 44 of these were attributed to Ray 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
1989	Carr v. Brasher· Dissent†	776 S.W.2d 567	1,433
1984	Montgomery v. Kennedy· Dissent†	669 S.W.2d 309	1,052
1982	Gillespie v. Gillespie	644 S.W.2d 449	991
1989	Casso v. Brand· Dissent†	776 S.W.2d 551	876
1984	Brownlee v. Brownlee	665 S.W.2d 111	801
1982	Roark v. Allen	633 S.W.2d 804	670
1987	Arnold v. National County Mutual Fire Insurance Co.	725 S.W.2d 165	622
1984	Morgan v. Compugraphic Corp.	675 S.W.2d 729	493
1985	Jacobs v. Jacobs	687 S.W.2d 731	372
1984	Bonniwell v. Beech Aircraft Corp.	663 S.W.2d 816	368
1983	Houston First American Savings v. Musick	650 S.W.2d 764	368
1988	Wyatt v. Shaw Plumbing Co.	760 S.W.2d 245	344
1983	Sanchez v. Schindler· Concurrence†	651 S.W.2d 249	318
1983	White v. Southwestern Bell Tel. Co., Inc.	651 S.W.2d 260	298
1982	Vallone v. Vallone	644 S.W.2d 455	269

Showing the 15 most-cited of 134 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 Texas reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was C.L. Ray Jr. on?: C.L. Ray Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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