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 1941 / Served to 1948

James P. Alexander

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

James P. Alexander was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1941. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1883–1948
Tenure: 1941–1948 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1941	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Baylor University
The University of Texas at Austin

Judicial Record

In our data, Alexander authored 143 published opinions for the court (1895–1948), plus 16 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Railroad Commission of Texas v. Shell Oil Co. (279 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. 60 of these were attributed to Alexander 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
1942	Railroad Commission of Texas v. Shell Oil Co.	161 S.W.2d 1022	279
1946	Trapp v. Shell Oil Co.· Dissent	198 S.W.2d 424	275
1944	Stanford v. Butler	181 S.W.2d 269	227
1941	Anderson v. Wood†	137 Tex. 201	227
1947	Ramsey v. Dunlop· Concurrence†	146 Tex. 196	211
1942	Commonwealth v. Davis†	140 Tex. 398	202
1942	Jacob E. Decker & Sons, Inc. v. Capps	164 S.W.2d 828	193
1942	Cramer v. Sheppard· Dissent†	140 Tex. 271	173
1946	International Printing Pressmen & Assistants' Union v. Smith	198 S.W.2d 729	168
1942	Slaughter v. Qualls	162 S.W.2d 671	166
1943	Bednarz v. State	176 S.W.2d 562	146
1942	Garcia v. King	164 S.W.2d 509	134
1941	Danciger Oil & Refining Co. v. Powell†	137 Tex. 484	134
1942	Buchanan v. Rose	159 S.W.2d 109	132
1941	Miller v. County of El Paso†	136 Tex. 370	132

Showing the 15 most-cited of 163 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 P. Alexander on?: James P. Alexander was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas.

Sources

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

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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).