How do judges of the New Mexico Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

New Mexico Supreme Court / Joined 1947 / Served to 1972

James C. Compton

Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court

James C. Compton was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1947. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1886 · age 140
Tenure: 1947–1972 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1947	New Mexico Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Cumberland University

Judicial Record

In our data, Compton authored 583 published opinions for the court (1947–1972), plus 21 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: State Ex Rel. Bliss v. Greenwood (88 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. 166 of these were attributed to Compton 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
1957	State Ex Rel. Bliss v. Greenwood	315 P.2d 223	88
1970	Jewell v. Seidenberg· Dissent†	477 P.2d 296	73
1948	State v. Prince	189 P.2d 993	66
1947	State v. Arnold	183 P.2d 845	62
1953	Morris v. Cartwright†	57 N.M. 328	60
1954	State v. White· Concurrence†	270 P.2d 727	58
1957	State Ex Rel. Hovey Concrete Products Co. v. Mechem	316 P.2d 1069	55
1966	State v. Deltenre	424 P.2d 782	54
1964	Llano, Inc. v. Southern Union Gas Company	399 P.2d 646	51
1949	Brown v. Cobb	204 P.2d 264	51
1961	State v. Trimble	362 P.2d 788	47
1960	State v. Romero· Dissent†	352 P.2d 781	46
1950	Michelson v. House	218 P.2d 861	46
1959	State v. Nelson	338 P.2d 301	45
1966	Ross v. Sayers Well Servicing Company	414 P.2d 679	44

Showing the 15 most-cited of 609 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 New Mexico Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was James C. Compton on?: James C. Compton was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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