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 1981 / Served to 1988

James P. Wallace

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

James P. Wallace was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1928 · age 98
Tenure: 1981–1988 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Wallace authored 93 published opinions for the court (1981–1988), plus 16 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Downer v. Aquamarine Operators, Inc. (6,606 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. 23 of these were attributed to Wallace 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
1985	Downer v. Aquamarine Operators, Inc.	701 S.W.2d 238	6,606
1985	Holick v. Smith· Dissent†	685 S.W.2d 18	1,964
1986	Spoljaric v. Percival Tours, Inc.· Dissent†	708 S.W.2d 432	635
1988	Aranda v. Insurance Co. of North America· Dissent†	748 S.W.2d 210	516
1983	English v. Fischer	660 S.W.2d 521	475
1987	Birchfield v. Texarkana Memorial Hospital	747 S.W.2d 361	467
1984	Strackbein v. Prewitt	671 S.W.2d 37	460
1985	Sabine Pilot Service, Inc. v. Hauck	687 S.W.2d 733	447
1982	Holley v. Watts	629 S.W.2d 694	415
1986	Island Recreational Development Corp. v. Republic of Texas Savings Ass'n	710 S.W.2d 551	409
1983	Jackson v. Van Winkle	660 S.W.2d 807	401
1988	Camarena v. Texas Employment Commission	754 S.W.2d 149	399
1984	Nelson v. Krusen· Dissent†	678 S.W.2d 918	325
1988	Cropper v. Caterpillar Tractor Co.	754 S.W.2d 646	316
1982	James v. Brown· Dissent†	637 S.W.2d 914	304

Showing the 15 most-cited of 113 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. Wallace on?: James P. Wallace 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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7 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).