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 1954 / Served to 1956

James J. Mayfield

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

James J. Mayfield was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1954. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1911–1956
Tenure: 1954–1956 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1954	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

The University of Alabama
The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Mayfield authored 41 published opinions for the court (1954–1956), plus 2 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Griggs v. Barnes (64 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. 24 of these were attributed to Mayfield 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
1955	Griggs v. Barnes	78 So. 2d 910	64
1955	Levine v. Levine	80 So. 2d 235	54
1955	Berness v. State	83 So. 2d 613	48
1956	Opinion of the Justices· Concurrence†	264 Ala. 176	42
1955	Welch v. State· Dissent†	81 So. 2d 901	38
1955	Pike v. Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Co.	81 So. 2d 254	34
1955	English v. Jacobs	82 So. 2d 542	32
1955	Horn v. Dunn Brothers, Inc.	79 So. 2d 11	31
1955	Weekley v. Horn	82 So. 2d 341	30
1955	Brittain v. Jenkins	83 So. 2d 432	29
1955	Trans-Continental Mutual Insurance Co. v. Harrison	78 So. 2d 917	24
1955	Vardaman v. Benefit Ass'n of Railway Employees, Inc.	82 So. 2d 272	22
1955	Prince v. Lowe· Concurrence†	82 So. 2d 606	21
1955	BARBER PURE MILK COMPANY v. Holmes	84 So. 2d 345	19
1955	Sullivan v. Davis	83 So. 2d 434	18

Showing the 15 most-cited of 45 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 J. Mayfield on?: James J. Mayfield 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.

2 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).