How do judges of the Court of Appeals of Texas reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Court of Appeals of Texas / Joined 2003 / Served to 2024

Dori Contreras

Chief Justice, Court of Appeals of Texas

Dori Contreras was a Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals of Texas, who joined the court in 2003. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1958 · age 68
Tenure: 2003–2024 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2009	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2015	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2019	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–

Education

The University of Texas at Austin	Accounting	1980
University of Houston		1990

Judicial Record

In our data, Contreras authored 54 published opinions for the court (2003–2018). Most cited: Porter v. Texas Department of Protective & Regulatory Services (144 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. 6 of these were attributed to Contreras 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
2003	Porter v. Texas Department of Protective & Regulatory Services	105 S.W.3d 52	144
2003	Ward v. Malone	115 S.W.3d 267	111
2009	Landreth v. Las Brisas Council of Co-Owners, Inc.	285 S.W.3d 492	107
2003	Sanchez v. State	112 S.W.3d 311	69
2003	Gonzalez v. State	115 S.W.3d 278	51
2004	Pena v. State	132 S.W.3d 663	50
2006	McAfee v. State	204 S.W.3d 868	44
2005	Resendez v. State	160 S.W.3d 181	41
2006	City of Weslaco v. Borne	210 S.W.3d 782	40
2005	Garza v. Attorney General	166 S.W.3d 799	40
2005	Medical Specialist Group, P.A. v. Radiology Associates, L.L.P.	171 S.W.3d 727	35
2004	Hidalgo County v. Gonzalez	128 S.W.3d 788	34
2007	Twist v. McAllen National Bank	248 S.W.3d 351	30
2005	Mission Resources, Inc. v. Garza Energy Trust	166 S.W.3d 301	28
2003	Lavaca Bay Autoworld, L.L.C. v. Marshall Pontiac Buick Oldsmobile	103 S.W.3d 650	26

Showing the 15 most-cited of 54 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 Court of Appeals of Texas reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Dori Contreras on?: Dori Contreras was a Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals 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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21 years on the Court of Appeals of Texas. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).