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 1995 / Served to 2001

Greg W. Abbott

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Greg W. Abbott was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1957 · age 69
Tenure: 1995–2001 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

The University of Texas at Austin
Vanderbilt University

Judicial Record

In our data, Abbott authored 40 published opinions for the court (1996–2001), plus 12 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Formosa Plastics Corp. USA v. Presidio Engineers and Contractors, Inc. (1,875 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. 45 of these were attributed to Abbott 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
1998	Formosa Plastics Corp. USA v. Presidio Engineers and Contractors, Inc.†	960 S.W.2d 41	1,875
1998	Mayhew v. Town of Sunnyvale†	964 S.W.2d 922	1,828
2000	FM Properties Operating Co. v. City of Austin· Dissent†	22 S.W.3d 868	1,543
1998	Johnson & Higgins of Texas, Inc. v. Kenneco Energy, Inc.†	962 S.W.2d 507	1,112
2000	Horizon/CMS Healthcare Corporation v. Auld	34 S.W.3d 887	1,104
2001	Bradford v. Vento	48 S.W.3d 749	994
2000	Crown Life Insurance Company v. Casteel†	22 S.W.3d 378	971
2001	General Services Commission v. Little-Tex Insulation Co.· Concurrence†	39 S.W.3d 591	943
1996	Leitch v. Hornsby· Concurrence†	935 S.W.2d 114	889
1996	Tenneco Inc. v. Enterprise Products Co.†	925 S.W.2d 640	794
2000	Osterberg v. Peca	12 S.W.3d 31	736
1996	Barshop v. Medina County Underground Water Conservation District†	925 S.W.2d 618	728
1998	Dallas Cty. Mental Health and Mental Retardation v. Bossley· Dissent†	968 S.W.2d 339	685
1999	Quick v. City of Austin	7 S.W.3d 109	675
1999	GTE Southwest, Inc. v. Bruce	998 S.W.2d 605	441

Showing the 15 most-cited of 60 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 Greg W. Abbott on?: Greg W. Abbott 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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6 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).