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 2012 / Active

John Donovan

Justice, Court of Appeals of Texas

John Donovan is a Justice of the Court of Appeals of Texas, serving since 2012. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2012 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2012	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Donovan authored 65 published opinions for the court (2013–2018), plus 6 dissents. Most cited: in the Interest of E.A.F., Child (88 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. 71 of these were attributed to Donovan 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
2014	in the Interest of E.A.F., Child†	424 S.W.3d 742	88
2017	Williams v. State†	531 S.W.3d 902	78
2013	Heritage Gulf Coast Properties, Ltd. v. Sandalwood Apartments, Inc.†	416 S.W.3d 642	70
2014	Jessica Briones v. Brazos Bend Villa Apartments†	438 S.W.3d 808	51
2015	Weizhong Zheng v. Vacation Network, Inc. and Linh C. Dinh†	468 S.W.3d 180	44
2014	United National Insurance Company v. AMJ Investments, LLC· Dissent†	447 S.W.3d 1	41
2017	National Security Fire & Casualty Co. v. Hurst†	523 S.W.3d 840	37
2015	Davis-Lynch, Inc. v. Asgard Technologies, LLC· Dissent†	472 S.W.3d 50	35
2014	Parex Resources, Inc. and Ramshorn International Limited v. ERG Resources, LLC†	427 S.W.3d 407	33
2017	In the Interest of J.R.P.†	526 S.W.3d 770	31
2015	LDF Construction, Inc. v. Texas Friends of Chabad Lubavitch, Inc. D/B/A Chabad Lubavitch Center of Houston†	459 S.W.3d 720	27
2015	Hsin-Chi-Su AKA Nobu Su v. Vantage Drilling Company†	474 S.W.3d 284	25
2016	Wyly v. Integrity Insurance Solutions†	502 S.W.3d 901	24
2015	Cornelius Jackson v. State†	468 S.W.3d 189	24
2013	Ex Parte Ronald Darnell Cephus†	410 S.W.3d 416	24

Showing the 15 most-cited of 71 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 is John Donovan on?: John Donovan is a Justice of the Court of Appeals of Texas.

Sources

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

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13 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).