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 1943 / Served to 1962

Davis F. Stakely

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

Davis F. Stakely was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1943. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1883 · age 143
Tenure: 1943–1962 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1943	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Stakely authored 814 published opinions for the court (1943–1962), plus 2 dissents. Most cited: Mason v. State (142 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. 337 of these were attributed to Stakely 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
1953	Mason v. State	66 So. 2d 557	142
1944	Blue v. State	19 So. 2d 11	121
1950	Smith v. Smith	48 So. 2d 546	87
1948	Smith v. Doss	37 So. 2d 118	85
1958	McLaney v. Turner	104 So. 2d 315	73
1960	Johnson Publishing Co. v. Davis	124 So. 2d 441	69
1948	Williams v. State	39 So. 2d 37	69
1961	Norris v. Moskin Stores, Inc.	132 So. 2d 321	65
1947	Alabama State Milk Control Board v. Graham	33 So. 2d 11	65
1949	Alabama Public Service Commission v. Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Co.	42 So. 2d 655	61
1944	Burns v. State	19 So. 2d 450	60
1961	Grandquest v. Williams	135 So. 2d 391	55
1955	Wright v. State	79 So. 2d 74	48
1958	Brunson Milling Co. v. Grimes	103 So. 2d 315	44
1952	Byrd v. State	57 So. 2d 388	43

Showing the 15 most-cited of 816 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 Davis F. Stakely on?: Davis F. Stakely was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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19 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).