How do judges of the New Mexico Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

New Mexico Supreme Court / Joined 1960 / Served to 1968

David Chavez Jr.

Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court

David Chavez Jr. was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1960. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1897–1984
Tenure: 1960–1968 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1960	New Mexico Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Georgetown University

Judicial Record

In our data, Chavez authored 206 published opinions for the court (1960–1968). Most cited: McCauley v. Ray (101 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. 29 of these were attributed to Chavez 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
1968	McCauley v. Ray	453 P.2d 192	101
1960	Lucero Ex Rel. Lucero v. Torres	350 P.2d 1028	69
1968	Galvan v. Miller	445 P.2d 961	61
1966	State v. Lujan	412 P.2d 405	54
1966	State v. Miller	412 P.2d 240	53
1962	Mahoney v. JC Penney Company	377 P.2d 663	47
1968	Fredenburgh v. Allied Van Lines, Inc.	446 P.2d 868	41
1962	Bolt v. Davis	374 P.2d 648	40
1961	State v. Quintana	364 P.2d 120	39
1965	Grandi v. LeSage	399 P.2d 285	36
1962	Gray v. Armijo	372 P.2d 821	34
1961	Lopez v. Heesen	365 P.2d 448	33
1963	Hoskins v. Albuquerque Bus Company	382 P.2d 700	32
1965	J. A. Silversmith, Inc. v. Marchiondo	404 P.2d 122	30
1960	Southwestern Public Service Co. v. Artesia Alfalfa Growers' Ass'n	353 P.2d 62	30

Showing the 15 most-cited of 206 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 New Mexico Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was David Chavez Jr. on?: David Chavez Jr. was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court.

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.

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