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 1950 / Served to 1970

Clyde E. Smith

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Clyde E. Smith was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1950. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1897–1971
Tenure: 1950–1970 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1950	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 224 published opinions for the court (1951–1970), plus 137 dissents and 34 concurrences. Most cited: Benoit v. Wilson (549 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. 187 of these were attributed to Smith 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
1951	Benoit v. Wilson	239 S.W.2d 792	549
1968	City of Pinehurst v. Spooner Addition Water Co.	432 S.W.2d 515	473
1963	International Bankers Life Insurance Co. v. Holloway· Dissent†	368 S.W.2d 567	422
1970	Seideneck v. Cal Bayreuther Associates· Dissent†	451 S.W.2d 752	405
1958	Tobin v. Garcia· Concurrence†	159 Tex. 58	357
1962	Gaines v. Hamman· Concurrence†	358 S.W.2d 557	344
1970	Busby v. Busby	457 S.W.2d 551	302
1968	Firemen's Ins. Co. of Newark, New Jersey v. Burch· Dissent†	442 S.W.2d 331	298
1958	Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. McBride· Dissent†	322 S.W.2d 492	297
1963	Drye v. Eagle Rock Ranch, Inc.· Dissent†	364 S.W.2d 196	282
1963	Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co. v. McCardell· Concurrence†	369 S.W.2d 331	269
1965	Wheeler v. White	398 S.W.2d 93	265
1965	Hart v. Van Zandt· Separate†	399 S.W.2d 791	260
1962	Myers v. Gulf Coast Minerals Management Corp.	361 S.W.2d 193	258
1960	State v. City of Austin· Separate†	331 S.W.2d 737	240

Showing the 15 most-cited of 402 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 Clyde E. Smith on?: Clyde E. Smith 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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20 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).