How do judges of the New Mexico Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

New Mexico Supreme Court / Joined 2003 / Active

Edward L. Chavez

Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court

Edward L. Chavez is a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, serving since 2003. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2003 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	New Mexico Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Chavez authored 141 published opinions for the court (2003–2023), plus 12 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: Elane Photography, LLC v. Willock (292 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. 66 of these were attributed to Chavez 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
2013	Elane Photography, LLC v. Willock†	4 N.M. 605	292
2012	State v. Swick†	2012 NMSC 18	271
2011	State v. Garcia	2011 NMSC 3	234
2006	State v. Duran	2006 NMSC 35	232
2006	State v. DeGraff· Concurrence†	131 P.3d 61	232
2010	Romero v. Philip Morris Inc.	242 P.3d 280	216
2007	State v. Gallegos	152 P.3d 828	208
2012	State v. Arrendondo	278 P.3d 517	182
2003	State v. Vandenberg· Dissent†	81 P.3d 19	162
2005	State v. Graham· Concurrence†	109 P.3d 285	149
2003	State v. Davis	74 P.3d 1064	144
2009	Durham v. Guest	204 P.3d 19	129
2011	State v. Gutierrez	258 P.3d 1024	125
2007	State v. Martinez	160 P.3d 894	122
2007	State v. Frazier· Concurrence†	164 P.3d 1	119

Showing the 15 most-cited of 165 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 New Mexico Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court is Edward L. Chavez on?: Edward L. Chavez is a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court.

Sources

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

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23 years on the New Mexico Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).