How do judges of the New Mexico Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

New Mexico Supreme Court / Joined 1973 / Served to 1975

Joe L. Martinez

Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court

Joe L. Martinez was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1973. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1910–1998
Tenure: 1973–1975 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1973	New Mexico Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Martinez authored 30 published opinions for the court (1973–1975). Most cited: State v. Tijerina (41 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. 6 of these were attributed to Martinez 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
1973	State v. Tijerina	519 P.2d 127	41
1975	State v. Lujan	534 P.2d 1112	31
1974	Watson Land Company v. Lucero	517 P.2d 1302	30
1973	Sierra Life Insurance v. First National Life Insurance	512 P.2d 1245	23
1973	Richins v. Mayfield	514 P.2d 854	22
1974	State ex rel. Bell v. Hansen Lumber Co.†	86 N.M. 312	19
1974	Griffith v. New Mexico Public Service Commission	520 P.2d 269	19
1973	In Re McCain	506 P.2d 1204	19
1973	Gulf Oil Corp. v. Rota-Cone Field Operating Co.†	515 P.2d 640	17
1973	State v. Gillihan	514 P.2d 33	17
1973	Mutual Building & Loan Ass'n of Las Cruces v. Collins	516 P.2d 677	16
1973	Aetna Life Insurance Company v. Nix	512 P.2d 1251	14
1974	Lerma v. Romero	528 P.2d 647	13
1974	Constructors, Ltd. v. Garcia	520 P.2d 273	12
1974	State Ex Rel. Santa Fe Sand & Gravel Co. v. Pecos Construction Co.	519 P.2d 294	11

Showing the 15 most-cited of 30 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 New Mexico Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Joe L. Martinez on?: Joe L. Martinez was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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2 years on the New Mexico Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).