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 1985 / Served to 2005

J. Gorman Houston Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

J. Gorman Houston Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1933 · age 93
Tenure: 1985–2005 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

Auburn University
The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Houston authored 1,182 published opinions for the court (1985–2005), plus 229 dissents and 275 concurrences. Most cited: Hanners v. Balfour Guthrie, Inc. (628 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. 818 of these were attributed to Houston 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
1990	Hanners v. Balfour Guthrie, Inc.	564 So. 2d 412	628
1996	Ex Parte Trinity Industries, Inc.	680 So. 2d 262	428
1992	IMED Corp. v. Systems Engineering Assoc.	602 So. 2d 344	423
1993	Ex Parte United Service Stations, Inc.· Concurrence†	628 So. 2d 501	386
1986	Wilson v. Brown	496 So. 2d 756	353
1989	Green Oil Co. v. Hornsby	539 So. 2d 218	337
1996	Ex Parte Bryowsky	676 So. 2d 1322	316
1997	Foremost Ins. Co. v. Parham	693 So. 2d 409	279
1994	Ex Parte Perkins	646 So. 2d 46	279
1989	Ex Parte Bayliss	550 So. 2d 986	279
1991	Ex Parte Alfab, Inc.	586 So. 2d 889	266
1989	Berner v. Caldwell· Concurrence†	543 So. 2d 686	249
1988	Smith v. Equifax Services, Inc.	537 So. 2d 463	242
1994	Dykes v. Lane Trucking, Inc.	652 So. 2d 248	205
1988	Kirtland v. Fort Morgan Auth. Sewer Serv., Inc.	524 So. 2d 600	203

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,686 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 J. Gorman Houston Jr. on?: J. Gorman Houston Jr. 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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20 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).