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 1977 / Served to 1989

Clement Clay Torbert Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

Clement Clay Torbert Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1929 · age 97
Tenure: 1977–1989 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

Auburn University
The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Torbert authored 446 published opinions for the court (1977–1989), plus 108 dissents and 146 concurrences. Most cited: Ex Parte Jackson (233 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. 417 of these were attributed to Torbert 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
1987	Ex Parte Jackson	516 So. 2d 768	233
1988	Ex Parte Frith	526 So. 2d 880	172
1985	Ex Parte Cochran	500 So. 2d 1179	171
1987	Parker v. Amerson· Concurrence†	519 So. 2d 442	156
1982	Ex Parte Allen· Dissent†	414 So. 2d 993	137
1981	Aspinwall v. Gowens· Dissent†	405 So. 2d 134	137
1985	Ex Parte Dowling· Concurrence†	477 So. 2d 400	124
1984	Foster v. Greer and Sons, Inc.	446 So. 2d 605	114
1978	League v. McDonald	355 So. 2d 695	113
1984	Berkel & Co. Contractors v. Providence Hosp.	454 So. 2d 496	112
1985	Bank of Red Bay v. King· Concurrence†	482 So. 2d 274	102
1981	Caterpillar Tractor Co. v. Ford· Dissent†	406 So. 2d 854	101
1980	Stiles v. Brown	380 So. 2d 792	101
1986	Gross v. Lowder Rlty. Better Homes & Gardens· Dissent†	494 So. 2d 590	100
1984	Ex Parte Washington	448 So. 2d 404	98

Showing the 15 most-cited of 701 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 Clement Clay Torbert Jr. on?: Clement Clay Torbert Jr. 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.

12 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).