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 1977 / Served to 1983

H Vern Payne

Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court

H Vern Payne was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1936 · age 90
Tenure: 1977–1983 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	New Mexico Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Georgetown University

Judicial Record

In our data, Payne authored 175 published opinions for the court (1958–1984), plus 10 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: United Nuclear Corp. v. General Atomic Co. (166 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. 39 of these were attributed to Payne 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
1980	United Nuclear Corp. v. General Atomic Co.	629 P.2d 231	166
1981	State v. Chouinard	634 P.2d 680	111
1982	State Ex Rel. Human Services Department v. Staples	650 P.2d 824	95
1980	State v. Ruffino	612 P.2d 1311	93
1977	State Ex Rel. Bird v. Apodaca· Dissent†	573 P.2d 213	71
1984	State v. McCrary	675 P.2d 120	66
1980	Mask v. Mask	620 P.2d 883	65
1979	State v. Orona	589 P.2d 1041	61
1980	State v. Moore	612 P.2d 1314	60
1982	Lopez Ex Rel. Estate of Lopez v. Foundation Reserve Insurance	646 P.2d 1230	59
1960	Jackson v. Southwestern Public Service Company	349 P.2d 1029	58
1977	State v. Castrillo	566 P.2d 1146	57
1980	Toltec International, Inc. v. Village of Ruidoso	619 P.2d 186	55
1977	Olguin v. State	563 P.2d 97	47
1978	Stringer v. Dudoich	583 P.2d 462	45

Showing the 15 most-cited of 187 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 was H Vern Payne on?: H Vern Payne was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court.

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