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 1954

Graham B. Smedley

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

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

Lived: 1879–1954
Tenure: 1945–1954 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

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

Education

University of Virginia-Main Campus

Judicial Record

In our data, Smedley authored 205 published opinions for the court (1934–1954), plus 16 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Alexander v. Hagedorn (511 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. 31 of these were attributed to Smedley 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
1950	Alexander v. Hagedorn· Dissent†	226 S.W.2d 996	511
1935	Compton v. Elliott	88 S.W.2d 91	470
1945	Cobb v. Harrington	190 S.W.2d 709	460
1936	Stockyards National Bank v. Maples	95 S.W.2d 1300	417
1951	Fitz-Gerald v. Hull· Dissent†	237 S.W.2d 256	300
1945	Slay v. Burnett Trust	187 S.W.2d 377	214
1947	Lewis v. Davis	199 S.W.2d 146	198
1948	Hood v. Texas Indemnity Insurance· Dissent	209 S.W.2d 345	195
1940	Duhig v. Peavy-Moore Lumber Co.	144 S.W.2d 878	182
1953	Western Reserve Life Insurance v. Meadows	261 S.W.2d 554	173
1939	Southern Pine Lumber Co. v. Andrade	124 S.W.2d 334	167
1954	Orsborn v. Deep Rock Oil Corp.	267 S.W.2d 781	166
1954	State v. Whittenburg· Dissent†	265 S.W.2d 569	164
1949	Jones v. Marsh†	148 Tex. 362	147
1951	Hopson v. Gulf Oil Corp.	237 S.W.2d 352	146

Showing the 15 most-cited of 226 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 Graham B. Smedley on?: Graham B. Smedley 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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9 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).