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 1982

Joe R. Greenhill

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

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

Lived: 1914–2011
Tenure: 1957–1982 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

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

Education

The University of Texas at Austin
Southern Methodist University

Judicial Record

In our data, Greenhill authored 244 published opinions for the court (1958–1982), plus 43 dissents and 21 concurrences. Most cited: Great American Reserve Insurance Co. v. San Antonio Plumbing Supply Co. (1,362 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. 72 of these were attributed to Greenhill 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
1965	Great American Reserve Insurance Co. v. San Antonio Plumbing Supply Co.	391 S.W.2d 41	1,362
1981	Sun Oil Co. (Delaware) v. Madeley	626 S.W.2d 726	668
1976	Lowe v. Texas Tech University· Concurrence†	540 S.W.2d 297	569
1981	Burk Royalty Co. v. Walls· Concurrence†	616 S.W.2d 911	508
1965	McKanna v. Edgar	388 S.W.2d 927	493
1980	State Bar of Tex. v. Heard· Dissent†	603 S.W.2d 829	354
1975	Rourke v. Garza	530 S.W.2d 794	342
1974	Curtis v. Gibbs	511 S.W.2d 263	325
1968	Smith v. Davis	426 S.W.2d 827	317
1980	Riverside National Bank v. Lewis	603 S.W.2d 169	315
1963	Halepeska v. Callihan Interests, Inc.	371 S.W.2d 368	307
1979	State v. Terrell	588 S.W.2d 784	298
1976	Abalos v. Oil Development Co. of Texas	544 S.W.2d 627	296
1963	Drye v. Eagle Rock Ranch, Inc.	364 S.W.2d 196	282
1980	Smith v. Baldwin· Dissent†	611 S.W.2d 611	268

Showing the 15 most-cited of 308 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 Joe R. Greenhill on?: Joe R. Greenhill 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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25 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).