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 1947 / Served to 1950

James P. Hart

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

James P. Hart was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1947. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1904–1987
Tenure: 1947–1950 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1947	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hart authored 31 published opinions for the court (1947–1950), plus 6 dissents. Most cited: Canales v. Laughlin (388 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 Hart 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
1948	Canales v. Laughlin	214 S.W.2d 451	388
1949	Little Rock Furniture Manufacturing Co. v. Dunn†	148 Tex. 197	350
1950	Smith v. Henger	226 S.W.2d 425	221
1948	Houston National Bank v. Adair†	146 Tex. 387	162
1948	Mundy v. Pirie-Slaughter Motor Co.†	146 Tex. 314	135
1948	Wisdom v. Smith	209 S.W.2d 164	110
1948	Ricks v. Grubbs	214 S.W.2d 925	100
1950	Construction & General Labor Union, Local No. 688 v. Stephenson	225 S.W.2d 958	98
1949	Paddock v. Siemoneit†	147 Tex. 571	82
1947	Humble Oil & Refining Co. v. Harrison†	146 Tex. 216	76
1950	Hallaway v. Thompson	226 S.W.2d 816	74
1950	Lloyds Casualty Insurer v. McCrary	229 S.W.2d 605	72
1949	East Texas Motor Freight Lines v. Loftis†	148 Tex. 242	70
1949	Worden v. Worden†	148 Tex. 356	62
1950	Miears v. Industrial Accident Board	232 S.W.2d 671	57

Showing the 15 most-cited of 38 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. Hart on?: James P. Hart 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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3 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).