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 1991 / Served to 1997

John Cornyn

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

John Cornyn was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1991. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1952 · age 74
Tenure: 1991–1997 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Trinity University

Judicial Record

In our data, Cornyn authored 68 published opinions for the court (1991–1997), plus 17 dissents and 22 concurrences. Most cited: Texas Ass'n of Business v. Texas Air Control Board (5,047 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. 75 of these were attributed to Cornyn 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
1993	Texas Ass'n of Business v. Texas Air Control Board	852 S.W.2d 440	5,047
1996	EI Du Pont De Nemours & Co. v. Robinson· Dissent†	923 S.W.2d 549	1,699
1992	Jack B. Anglin Co., Inc. v. Tipps	842 S.W.2d 266	1,691
1994	Transportation Insurance Co. v. Moriel†	879 S.W.2d 10	1,624
1997	Science Spectrum, Inc. v. Martinez†	941 S.W.2d 910	1,594
1997	American Tobacco Co., Inc. v. Grinnell†	951 S.W.2d 420	1,558
1997	Arthur Andersen & Co. v. Perry Equipment Corp.	945 S.W.2d 812	1,355
1995	Centeq Realty, Inc. v. Siegler†	899 S.W.2d 195	1,282
1995	City of Brownsville v. Alvarado†	897 S.W.2d 750	1,246
1993	State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. S.S.· Concurrence†	858 S.W.2d 374	1,051
1994	City of Lancaster v. Chambers†	883 S.W.2d 650	928
1996	Amstadt v. United States Brass Corp.†	919 S.W.2d 644	879
1996	S.V. v. R.V.· Concurrence†	933 S.W.2d 1	816
1994	Forbau Ex Rel. Miller v. Aetna Life Insurance Co.†	876 S.W.2d 132	764
1995	Parkway Co. v. Woodruff	901 S.W.2d 434	722

Showing the 15 most-cited of 107 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 John Cornyn on?: John Cornyn 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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6 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).