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 2004 / Served to 2013

David M. Medina

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

David M. Medina was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 2004. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1958 · age 68
Tenure: 2004–2013 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2004	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Texas State University
South Texas College of Law

Judicial Record

In our data, Medina authored 50 published opinions for the court (2005–2012), plus 6 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: In Re J.O.A. (1,758 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. 21 of these were attributed to Medina 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
2009	In Re J.O.A.	283 S.W.3d 336	1,758
2005	In the Interest of J.L.†	163 S.W.3d 79	1,221
2006	State v. Shumake	199 S.W.3d 279	1,134
2005	Michiana Easy Livin' Country, Inc. v. Holten· Dissent†	168 S.W.3d 777	1,002
2009	Timpte Industries, Inc. v. Gish	286 S.W.3d 306	844
2011	TGS-NOPEC GEOPHYSICAL CO. v. Combs	340 S.W.3d 432	659
2009	City of San Antonio v. Pollock· Dissent†	284 S.W.3d 809	436
2012	El Apple I, Ltd. v. Olivas†	370 S.W.3d 757	411
2006	Fiess v. State Farm Lloyds· Dissent†	202 S.W.3d 744	387
2011	Franka v. Velasquez· Dissent†	332 S.W.3d 367	374
2006	Seagull Energy E & P, Inc. v. Eland Energy, Inc.	207 S.W.3d 342	374
2007	Lamar Homes, Inc. v. Mid-Continent Casualty Co.†	242 S.W.3d 1	347
2009	Galbraith Engineering Consultants, Inc. v. Pochucha	290 S.W.3d 863	330
2006	Guideone Elite Insurance Co. v. Fielder Road Baptist Church	197 S.W.3d 305	295
2010	Marks v. St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital†	319 S.W.3d 658	271

Showing the 15 most-cited of 57 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 David M. Medina on?: David M. Medina 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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9 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).