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 1957 / Served to 1968

James R. Norvell

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

James R. Norvell was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1957. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1902–1969
Tenure: 1957–1968 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1957	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

University of Colorado Boulder
University of Colorado Boulder

Judicial Record

In our data, Norvell authored 153 published opinions for the court (1957–1968), plus 31 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: McKisson v. Sales Affiliates, Inc. (358 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. 52 of these were attributed to Norvell 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
1967	McKisson v. Sales Affiliates, Inc.	416 S.W.2d 787	358
1962	Gaines v. Hamman	358 S.W.2d 557	344
1968	Firemen's Ins. Co. of Newark, New Jersey v. Burch	442 S.W.2d 331	298
1964	Newspapers, Inc. v. Love	380 S.W.2d 582	275
1966	Ackermann v. Vordenbaum	403 S.W.2d 362	249
1958	Hubacek v. Ennis State Bank· Dissent†	317 S.W.2d 30	247
1958	Hyde Corporation v. Huffines	314 S.W.2d 763	232
1961	Brazos River Authority v. City of Graham	354 S.W.2d 99	217
1963	Hernandez v. Heldenfels	374 S.W.2d 196	205
1961	Camp v. Shannon· Concurrence†	348 S.W.2d 517	196
1967	Massachusetts Bond. & Ins. Co. v. Orkin Exterm. Co.· Dissent†	416 S.W.2d 396	192
1966	Gerst v. Nixon	411 S.W.2d 350	191
1967	Leithold v. Plass· Dissent†	413 S.W.2d 698	189
1961	Fulton v. Finch	346 S.W.2d 823	188
1966	Great American Reserve Insurance Co. v. Britton· Dissent†	406 S.W.2d 901	187

Showing the 15 most-cited of 195 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 R. Norvell on?: James R. Norvell 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

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

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).