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 1997 / Served to 2002

Deborah Hankinson

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Deborah Hankinson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1997. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1997–2002 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1997	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Southern Methodist University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hankinson authored 38 published opinions for the court (1998–2002), plus 8 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: In the Interest of J.F.C. (4,611 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. 19 of these were attributed to Hankinson 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
2002	In the Interest of J.F.C.· Dissent†	96 S.W.3d 256	4,611
2001	American Transitional Care Centers of Texas, Inc. v. Palacios	46 S.W.3d 873	1,858
1999	MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. Texas Utilities Electric Co.	995 S.W.2d 647	859
2001	Williams v. Lara	52 S.W.3d 171	771
2002	Lee Lewis Construction, Inc. v. Harrison	70 S.W.3d 778	754
1999	Quick v. City of Austin· Dissent†	7 S.W.3d 109	675
1998	Patterson v. Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas, Inc.†	971 S.W.2d 439	616
2002	Lenz v. Lenz	79 S.W.3d 10	598
1998	WFAA-TV, Inc. v. McLemore†	978 S.W.2d 568	454
1998	Childs v. Haussecker†	974 S.W.2d 31	381
2002	Gulf States Utilities Co. v. Low· Dissent†	79 S.W.3d 561	335
2002	Exxon Pipeline Co. v. Zwahr	88 S.W.3d 623	328
2000	Kroger Co. v. Keng	23 S.W.3d 347	289
1999	McCamish, Martin, Brown & Loeffler v. F.E. Appling Interests	991 S.W.2d 787	277
2002	Travis County v. Pelzel & Associates, Inc.	77 S.W.3d 246	268

Showing the 15 most-cited of 48 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 Deborah Hankinson on?: Deborah Hankinson 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

5 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).