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 1982 / Served to 1989

Harry E. Stowers Jr.

Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court

Harry E. Stowers Jr. was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1927 · age 99
Tenure: 1982–1989 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	New Mexico Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Georgetown University

Judicial Record

In our data, Stowers authored 107 published opinions for the court (1982–1989), plus 59 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Sutphin (538 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. 94 of these were attributed to Stowers 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
1988	State v. Sutphin	753 P.2d 1314	538
1987	Silva v. State· Dissent†	745 P.2d 380	162
1984	Schear v. Board of County Commissioners· Dissent†	687 P.2d 728	155
1984	State v. Martin· Dissent†	686 P.2d 937	152
1988	Richardson Ex Rel. Estate of Richardson v. Carnegie Library Restaurant, Inc.· Dissent†	763 P.2d 1153	101
1985	Ledbetter v. Webb· Concurrence†	711 P.2d 874	97
1989	Newberry v. Allied Stores, Inc.†	108 N.M. 424	96
1989	Newberry v. Allied Stores, Inc.	773 P.2d 1231	92
1987	Valdez v. Cillessen & Son, Inc.· Concurrence†	734 P.2d 1258	85
1987	State v. Boeglin	731 P.2d 943	83
1988	Castillo Ex Rel. Castillo v. County of Santa Fe· Dissent†	755 P.2d 48	80
1984	Vigil v. Arzola· Dissent†	687 P.2d 1038	76
1984	State v. Brown	676 P.2d 253	74
1986	Universal Life Church v. Coxon	728 P.2d 467	72
1988	Garcia v. Rodey, Dickason, Sloan, Akin & Robb, P.A.†	106 N.M. 757	70

Showing the 15 most-cited of 180 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 Harry E. Stowers Jr. on?: Harry E. Stowers Jr. 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).