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 2005 / Served to 2013

Don R. Willett

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Don R. Willett was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 2005. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1966 · age 60
Tenure: 2005–2013 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2005	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Baylor University
Duke University

Judicial Record

In our data, Willett authored 53 published opinions for the court (2006–2013), plus 16 dissents and 25 concurrences. 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. 60 of these were attributed to Willett 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.· Concurrence†	283 S.W.3d 336	1,758
2008	City of Rockwall v. Hughes· Dissent†	246 S.W.3d 621	1,171
2012	Kerry Heckman, on Behalf of Themselves and All Other Persons Similarly Situated v. Williamson County†	369 S.W.3d 137	1,134
2009	Entergy Gulf States, Inc. v. Summers· Concurrence†	282 S.W.3d 433	758
2012	Mission Consolidated Independent School District v. Garcia†	372 S.W.3d 629	650
2008	Perry Homes v. Cull· Concurrence†	258 S.W.3d 580	603
2006	In Re D. Wilson Const. Co.	196 S.W.3d 774	546
2010	Del Lago Partners, Inc. v. Smith	307 S.W.3d 762	485
2010	Waffle House, Inc. v. Williams	313 S.W.3d 796	477
2006	Alex Sheshunoff Management Services, L.P. v. Johnson	209 S.W.3d 644	476
2007	Ogletree v. Matthews· Concurrence†	262 S.W.3d 316	426
2009	Harrell v. State	286 S.W.3d 315	392
2009	Paul H. Smith v. Thomas O'donnell, of the Estate of Corwin Denney· Dissent†	288 S.W.3d 417	381
2007	Ford Motor Co. v. Ledesma	242 S.W.3d 32	372
2011	Tyler Scoresby, M.D. v. Catarino Santillan, Individually and as Next Friend of Samuel Santillan, a Minor· Concurrence†	346 S.W.3d 546	338

Showing the 15 most-cited of 94 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 Don R. Willett on?: Don R. Willett 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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8 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).