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 1995 / Served to 2002

James A. Baker

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

James A. Baker was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1930 · age 96
Tenure: 1995–2002 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Princeton University
The University of Texas at Austin

Judicial Record

In our data, Baker authored 61 published opinions for the court (1995–2003), plus 33 dissents and 19 concurrences. Most cited: Lehmann v. Har-Con Corp. (4,923 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. 68 of these were attributed to Baker 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
2001	Lehmann v. Har-Con Corp.· Concurrence†	39 S.W.3d 191	4,923
2002	BMC Software Belgium, NV v. Marchand	83 S.W.3d 789	3,003
1998	Verburgt v. Dorner· Dissent†	959 S.W.2d 615	2,685
1998	Maritime Overseas Corp. v. Ellis†	971 S.W.2d 402	1,981
2002	Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission v. IT-Davy	74 S.W.3d 849	1,966
1998	Formosa Plastics Corp. USA v. Presidio Engineers and Contractors, Inc.· Dissent†	960 S.W.2d 41	1,875
2002	Butnaru v. Ford Motor Co.	84 S.W.3d 198	1,694
2002	Southwestern Electric Power Co. v. Grant	73 S.W.3d 211	1,630
2000	FM Properties Operating Co. v. City of Austin	22 S.W.3d 868	1,543
1999	Rhone-Poulenc, Inc. v. Steel	997 S.W.2d 217	1,513
1998	Bocquet v. Herring· Dissent†	972 S.W.2d 19	1,497
1998	Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. v. Malone†	972 S.W.2d 35	1,315
2001	Helena Chemical Co. v. Wilkins	47 S.W.3d 486	1,137
1997	Federal Sign v. Texas Southern University†	951 S.W.2d 401	1,114
2001	General Services Commission v. Little-Tex Insulation Co.	39 S.W.3d 591	943

Showing the 15 most-cited of 113 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 James A. Baker on?: James A. Baker 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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6 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).