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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Texas / Joined 1988 / Served to 1996

Jack Hightower

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Jack Hightower was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1988. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1926–2013
Tenure: 1988–1996 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1988	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Baylor University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hightower authored 54 published opinions for the court (1989–1995), plus 10 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: McConnell v. Southside Independent School District (1,797 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. 29 of these were attributed to Hightower 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
1993	McConnell v. Southside Independent School District	858 S.W.2d 337	1,797
1991	Anderson v. City of Seven Points	806 S.W.2d 791	1,370
1993	State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. S.S.	858 S.W.2d 374	1,051
1991	Guardian Royal Exchange Assurance, Ltd. v. English China Clays, P.L.C.	815 S.W.2d 223	994
1990	Guaranty Federal Savings Bank v. Horseshoe Operating Co.	793 S.W.2d 652	664
1991	Cecil v. Smith	804 S.W.2d 509	437
1990	Juliette Fowler Homes, Inc. v. Welch Associates, Inc.	793 S.W.2d 660	414
1991	Victoria Bank & Trust Co. v. Brady	811 S.W.2d 931	400
1994	The State Bar of Texas v. Gomez· Dissent†	891 S.W.2d 243	372
1991	BHP Petroleum Co., Inc. v. Millard	800 S.W.2d 838	372
1990	GENERAL LAND OFFICE OF THE STATE OF TEX. v. Oxy USA, Inc.	789 S.W.2d 569	354
1993	Kramer v. Lewisville Memorial Hospital· Dissent†	858 S.W.2d 397	346
1994	Sorokolit v. Rhodes†	889 S.W.2d 239	344
1995	Peeler v. Hughes & Luce· Concurrence†	909 S.W.2d 494	342
1992	McCraw v. Maris	828 S.W.2d 756	341

Showing the 15 most-cited of 71 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 Texas reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Jack Hightower on?: Jack Hightower was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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