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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Louisiana / Joined 1979 / Served to 1996

Jack C. Watson

Justice, Supreme Court of Louisiana

Jack C. Watson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1928 · age 98
Tenure: 1979–1996 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	Supreme Court of Louisiana	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Watson authored 598 published opinions for the court (1980–1996), plus 35 dissents and 49 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Lynch (911 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. 149 of these were attributed to Watson 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
1983	State v. Lynch	441 So. 2d 732	911
1983	State v. Square	433 So. 2d 104	716
1987	Louisiana State Bar Ass'n v. Reis	513 So. 2d 1173	576
1995	State v. Johnson	664 So. 2d 94	380
1983	State v. Trahan	425 So. 2d 1222	345
1984	Harris v. Pizza Hut of Louisiana, Inc.	455 So. 2d 1364	317
1992	Louisiana State Bar Ass'n v. Boutall	597 So. 2d 444	264
1986	Scott v. Hosp. Serv. Dist. No. 1	496 So. 2d 270	263
1986	Hastings v. Baton Rouge General Hospital	498 So. 2d 713	249
1980	State v. Steele	387 So. 2d 1175	207
1991	Nelson v. Roadway Exp., Inc.	588 So. 2d 350	177
1984	State v. Watson	449 So. 2d 1321	170
1989	Hondroulis v. Schuhmacher	553 So. 2d 398	161
1980	Hunt v. City Stores, Inc.	387 So. 2d 585	160
1996	State v. Tart	672 So. 2d 116	157

Showing the 15 most-cited of 685 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 Louisiana reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Jack C. Watson on?: Jack C. Watson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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