How do judges of the Supreme Court of Louisiana reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Louisiana / Joined 1975 / Served to 1995

James L. Dennis

Justice, Supreme Court of Louisiana

James L. Dennis was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana (7 judges, selected by partisan election), who joined the court in 1975. He previously served on the Louisiana Court of Appeal. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1936 · age 90
Tenure: 1975–1995 · 19 yrs
Education: Louisiana Tech 1959

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	Louisiana Court of Appeal	–	–
1975	Supreme Court of Louisiana	–	–

Education

Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
Louisiana Tech University	B.A.	1959

Judicial Record

In our data, Dennis authored 155 published opinions for the court (1974–1995), plus 152 dissents and 127 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Raymo (214 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. 436 of these were attributed to Dennis 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
1982	State v. Raymo†	419 So. 2d 858	214
1986	State v. Washington†	491 So. 2d 1337	147
1985	Giroir v. South Louisiana Medical Center, Division of Hospitals†	475 So. 2d 1040	110
1988	In re J.M.P.†	528 So. 2d 1002	35
1982	In re P.V.W.· Concurrence†	424 So. 2d 1015	35
1993	LeBlanc v. State ex rel. Department of Transportation & Development, Office of Highways· Concurrence†	626 So. 2d 1151	29
1987	Keller v. Amedeo†	512 So. 2d 385	24
1994	State ex rel. R.D.C.· Concurrence†	632 So. 2d 745	20
1983	Jacobs v. New Orleans Public Service, Inc.†	432 So. 2d 843	20
1994	In the Matter of R.E.†	645 So. 2d 205	19
1978	State ex rel. Coco· Concurrence†	363 So. 2d 207	18
1986	State v. White†	483 So. 2d 1005	16
1975	Page v. Green†	306 So. 2d 847	16
1992	St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance Co. v. Smith· Concurrence†	609 So. 2d 809	14
1994	Wesley v. Louisiana Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church†	631 So. 2d 1163	13

Showing the 15 most-cited of 436 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 Louisiana reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was James L. Dennis on?: James L. Dennis was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana.

Sources

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

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