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 1971 / Served to 1982

James G. Denton

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

James G. Denton was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1917 · age 109
Tenure: 1971–1982 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Texas Tech University

Judicial Record

In our data, Denton authored 99 published opinions for the court (1971–1982), plus 11 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Mansfield State Bank v. Cohn (1,083 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. 17 of these were attributed to Denton 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
1978	Mansfield State Bank v. Cohn	573 S.W.2d 181	1,083
1980	R & P Enterprises v. LaGuarta, Gavrel & Kirk, Inc.	596 S.W.2d 517	497
1977	Stone v. Lawyers Title Ins. Corp.	554 S.W.2d 183	370
1976	Hohenberg Bros. Co. v. George E. Gibbons & Co.	537 S.W.2d 1	309
1980	Hardin v. Hardin	597 S.W.2d 347	282
1979	Ray v. Farmers' State Bank of Hart· Dissent†	576 S.W.2d 607	263
1980	Mendoza v. Fidelity & Guaranty Insurance Underwriters, Inc.	606 S.W.2d 692	254
1980	McClure v. Allied Stores of Texas, Inc.	608 S.W.2d 901	252
1981	Mead v. Johnson Group, Inc.	615 S.W.2d 685	248
1973	Argonaut Southwest Insurance Company v. Maupin	500 S.W.2d 633	247
1973	Billings v. Atkinson	489 S.W.2d 858	244
1977	Robinson v. Weaver	550 S.W.2d 18	243
1974	State v. Tennison	509 S.W.2d 560	242
1976	Nobles v. Marcus	533 S.W.2d 923	238
1980	Director of the Department of Agriculture & Environment v. Printing Industries Ass'n of Texas	600 S.W.2d 264	233

Showing the 15 most-cited of 111 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 G. Denton on?: James G. Denton 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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11 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).