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 1909 / Served to 1920

J. J. Mayfield

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

J. J. Mayfield was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1909. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1861 · age 165
Tenure: 1909–1920 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1909	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Mayfield authored 903 published opinions for the court (1909–1919), plus 58 dissents and 21 concurrences. Most cited: Birmingham Railway, Light & Power Co. v. Gonzalez (164 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. 781 of these were attributed to Mayfield 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
1913	Birmingham Railway, Light & Power Co. v. Gonzalez· Dissent†	183 Ala. 273	164
1911	Louisville & Nashville R. R. v. Williams†	172 Ala. 560	128
1909	City of Birmingham v. Southern Express Co.†	164 Ala. 529	127
1911	Birmingham Railway, Light & Power Co. v. Drennen†	175 Ala. 338	97
1909	Tobler v. Pioneer Mining & Mfg. Co.†	166 Ala. 482	97
1910	Wynn v. Tallapoosa County Bank†	168 Ala. 469	96
1911	Tennessee Coal, Iron & R. R. v. Smith†	171 Ala. 251	84
1914	Spicer v. State†	188 Ala. 9	83
1916	Smith v. State· Concurrence†	197 Ala. 193	76
1917	Mutual Life Ins. Co. of New York v. Lovejoy· Separate	78 So. 299	74
1912	Broom v. Douglass· Dissent†	175 Ala. 268	70
1911	Kennedy v. Davis†	171 Ala. 609	69
1910	Evans v. Wilhite†	167 Ala. 587	69
1909	Roberson v. State†	162 Ala. 30	68
1910	Woodson v. State· Dissent†	170 Ala. 87	65

Showing the 15 most-cited of 991 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. J. Mayfield on?: J. J. Mayfield 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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11 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).