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 1989 / Served to 1995

Ermest C. Hornsby

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

Ermest C. Hornsby was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1936 · age 90
Tenure: 1989–1995 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

Auburn University
The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Hornsby authored 233 published opinions for the court (1989–1996), plus 24 dissents and 22 concurrences. Most cited: West v. Founders Life Assur. Co. of Florida (2,411 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. 104 of these were attributed to Hornsby 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
1989	West v. Founders Life Assur. Co. of Florida	547 So. 2d 870	2,411
1993	Ex Parte United Service Stations, Inc.	628 So. 2d 501	386
1993	Nance by and Through Nance v. Matthews	622 So. 2d 297	282
1991	Ex Parte Bird· Concurrence†	594 So. 2d 676	258
1989	Phillips v. Thomas	555 So. 2d 81	193
1993	Wilma Corp. v. Fleming Foods of Alabama	613 So. 2d 359	182
1992	McClendon v. Mountain Top Flea Market	601 So. 2d 957	177
1992	Ex Parte Dill	600 So. 2d 372	148
1992	Ex Parte Jackson	598 So. 2d 895	147
1989	Knop v. McCain	561 So. 2d 229	122
1993	Ex Parte Cash	624 So. 2d 576	115
1990	Ex Parte Wilson	571 So. 2d 1251	112
1994	Ex Parte Board of Zoning Adjustment	636 So. 2d 415	105
1989	Southern States Ford, Inc. v. Proctor· Concurrence†	541 So. 2d 1081	94
1989	Harrell v. State	555 So. 2d 263	88

Showing the 15 most-cited of 279 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 Ermest C. Hornsby on?: Ermest C. Hornsby was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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6 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).