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 2003 / Served to 2013

Dale Wainwright

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Dale Wainwright was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 2003. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1961 · age 65
Tenure: 2003–2013 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Howard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Wainwright authored 52 published opinions for the court (2003–2012), plus 15 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: Texas Department of Parks & Wildlife v. Miranda (5,473 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. 46 of these were attributed to Wainwright 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
2004	Texas Department of Parks & Wildlife v. Miranda	133 S.W.3d 217	5,473
2005	Valence Operating Co. v. Dorsett	164 S.W.3d 656	3,800
2003	Provident Life & Accident Insurance Co. v. Knott	128 S.W.3d 211	3,329
2004	Joe v. Two Thirty Nine Joint Venture	145 S.W.3d 150	1,221
2006	State v. Shumake· Concurrence†	199 S.W.3d 279	1,134
2007	Low v. Henry	221 S.W.3d 609	1,041
2003	In the Interest of B.L.D.†	113 S.W.3d 340	885
2005	Diversicare General Partner, Inc. v. Rubio	185 S.W.3d 842	874
2008	In Re McAllen Medical Center, Inc.· Dissent†	275 S.W.3d 458	638
2005	Peter C. Browning v. Jeff P. Prostok†	165 S.W.3d 336	626
2003	McIntyre v. Ramirez	109 S.W.3d 741	559
2008	In Re Team Rocket, L.P.· Concurrence†	256 S.W.3d 257	539
2011	Exxon Corp. v. Emerald Oil & Gas Co., LC	348 S.W.3d 194	513
2004	Texas Workers' Compensation Commission v. Patient Advocates of Texas	136 S.W.3d 643	505
2011	CMH HOMES v. Perez	340 S.W.3d 444	499

Showing the 15 most-cited of 83 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 Dale Wainwright on?: Dale Wainwright 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).