How do judges of the Court of Appeals of Texas reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Court of Appeals of Texas / Joined 1999 / Served to 2026

James T. Worthen

Chief Justice, Court of Appeals of Texas

James T. Worthen was a Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals of Texas, who joined the court in 1999. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1954 · age 72
Tenure: 1999–2026 · 27 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1999	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2003	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2005	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2009	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2015	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2021	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–

Education

The University of Texas at Tyler		1978
The University of Texas at Tyler		1999
University of Virginia-Main Campus		2004

Judicial Record

In our data, Worthen authored 380 published opinions for the court (1999–2017), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: In the Interest of C.L.C. and C.R.D., Minor Children (152 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. 118 of these were attributed to Worthen 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
2003	In the Interest of C.L.C. and C.R.D., Minor Children†	119 S.W.3d 382	152
2006	Willis v. State	192 S.W.3d 585	149
2007	Canal Insurance Co. v. Hopkins	238 S.W.3d 549	111
2001	In the Interest of K.S.M., a Child†	61 S.W.3d 632	110
2000	Lee v. State†	21 S.W.3d 532	107
2006	Coleman v. State	188 S.W.3d 708	102
2006	Redmon v. Griffith	202 S.W.3d 225	97
2005	In Re East Texas Medical Center Athens	154 S.W.3d 933	94
2014	In re Fitzgerald†	429 S.W.3d 886	89
2004	Critchfield v. Smith	151 S.W.3d 225	79
2008	Von Hohn v. Von Hohn	260 S.W.3d 631	73
2002	Exxon Corp. v. Pluff	94 S.W.3d 22	71
2006	Vaughn v. Drennon	202 S.W.3d 308	70
2004	Santa Fe Petroleum, L.L.C. v. Star Canyon Corp.	156 S.W.3d 630	65
2004	Bankhead v. Maddox	135 S.W.3d 162	64

Showing the 15 most-cited of 381 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 Court of Appeals of Texas reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was James T. Worthen on?: James T. Worthen was a Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals 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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27 years on the Court of Appeals of Texas. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).