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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Alabama / Joined 2011 / Former Justice

James Allen Main

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

James Allen Main was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 2011. He previously served on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2011 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2009	Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–
2011	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

Auburn University
The University of Alabama
Auburn University
The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Main authored 187 published opinions for the court (2009–2018), plus 17 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: Benjamin L. Little v. Gene Robinson. (55 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. 194 of these were attributed to Main 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
2011	Benjamin L. Little v. Gene Robinson.†	72 So. 3d 1168	55
2013	Sturdivant v. BAC Home Loans Servicing· Concurrence†	159 So. 3d 31	46
2011	E.H.G. v. E.R.G.· Dissent†	73 So. 3d 634	45
2010	Gobble v. State†	104 So. 3d 920	42
2011	Matador Holdings v. Hopo Realty Investments, 1091700 (Ala. 8-5-2011)†	77 So. 3d 139	39
2012	Walker v. Capstone Building Corp.· Concurrence†	96 So. 3d 77	35
2010	Morris v. State†	60 So. 3d 326	33
2011	Revis v. State†	101 So. 3d 247	31
2013	P.B. Surf, Ltd. v. Savage†	128 So. 3d 700	27
2012	Regions Bank v. Lowrey†	101 So. 3d 210	27
2010	Dotch v. State†	67 So. 3d 936	25
2010	McMillan v. State†	139 So. 3d 184	24
2013	Precision Gear Co. v. Continental Motors, Inc.†	135 So. 3d 953	23
2015	State ex rel. Alabama Policy Institute· Concurrence†	200 So. 3d 495	22
2009	Shonelle Andre Jackson v. State of Alabama.†	133 So. 3d 420	22

Showing the 15 most-cited of 218 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 Alabama reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was James Allen Main on?: James Allen Main was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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