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 1945 / Served to 1949

Gordon Simpson

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Gordon Simpson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1945. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1894–1987
Tenure: 1945–1949 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1945	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Simpson authored 35 published opinions for the court (1944–1949), plus 6 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Commercial Credit Corp. v. Smith (162 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. 12 of these were attributed to Simpson 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
1945	Commercial Credit Corp. v. Smith	187 S.W.2d 363	162
1949	Fire Department v. City of Fort Worth†	147 Tex. 505	140
1948	Chevalier v. Lane's, Inc.· Concurrence	213 S.W.2d 530	111
1948	Thomas v. Groebl· Dissent	212 S.W.2d 625	98
1948	Najera v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.†	146 Tex. 367	98
1946	Boyd v. Frost National Bank of S.A.	196 S.W.2d 497	98
1948	Houston Transit Co. v. Felder	208 S.W.2d 880	86
1944	State of Texas v. Balli· Dissent	190 S.W.2d 71	86
1946	Texas & Pacific Railway Co. v. Day	197 S.W.2d 332	84
1945	Mission Independent School District v. Diserens	188 S.W.2d 568	84
1947	Railroad Commission v. Shell Oil Co.†	146 Tex. 286	83
1948	Hawkins v. Texas Co.· Dissent	209 S.W.2d 338	65
1947	Texas & Pacific Railway Co. v. Wood†	145 Tex. 534	63
1948	Chadwick v. Bristow	208 S.W.2d 888	60
1948	Watson v. Texas Indemnity Insurance	210 S.W.2d 989	58

Showing the 15 most-cited of 42 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 Gordon Simpson on?: Gordon Simpson 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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4 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).