How do judges of the Supreme Court of Alabama reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Alabama / Joined 1880 / Served to 1890

Henderson M. Somerville

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

Henderson M. Somerville was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1880. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1837 · age 189
Tenure: 1880–1890 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1880	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Somerville authored 395 published opinions for the court (1880–1890), plus 2 concurrences. Most cited: Gibson v. State (107 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. 395 of these were attributed to Somerville 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
1889	Gibson v. State†	89 Ala. 121	107
1888	Hussey v. State†	87 Ala. 121	83
1880	Davis v. State†	68 Ala. 58	79
1885	Louisville & Nashville Railroad v. Allen's Adm'r†	78 Ala. 494	57
1883	Meyer Bros. v. Mitchell†	75 Ala. 475	55
1889	Yellow-Stone Kit v. State†	88 Ala. 196	54
1886	Frenkel v. Hudson†	82 Ala. 158	54
1887	Williams v. Gibson†	84 Ala. 228	53
1882	Pearce v. Clements†	73 Ala. 256	53
1888	Woodstock Iron Co. v. Fullenwider†	87 Ala. 584	52
1887	Iron Age Publishing Co. v. Western Union Telegraph Co.†	83 Ala. 498	52
1881	Powell v. State†	69 Ala. 10	52
1885	Bell v. Reynolds†	78 Ala. 511	51
1882	Moore v. State†	71 Ala. 307	49
1890	East Tenn., Va. & Ga. Railroad v. Watson†	90 Ala. 41	45

Showing the 15 most-cited of 397 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 Alabama reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Henderson M. Somerville on?: Henderson M. Somerville was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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