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 1971 / Served to 1979

John B. McManus Jr.

Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court

John B. McManus Jr. was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1919–1979
Tenure: 1971–1979 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	New Mexico Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Georgetown University

Judicial Record

In our data, McManus authored 181 published opinions for the court (1956–1979), plus 5 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Hicks v. State (165 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. 65 of these were attributed to McManus 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
1976	Hicks v. State· Separate†	544 P.2d 1153	165
1972	Stang v. Hertz Corporation	497 P.2d 732	112
1978	State v. Doe	583 P.2d 464	104
1979	State v. Smith	591 P.2d 664	89
1977	State Ex Rel. Bird v. Apodaca	573 P.2d 213	71
1974	State Farm General Insurance Company v. Clifton	527 P.2d 798	71
1973	Springer Corporation v. Herrera	510 P.2d 1072	64
1976	State v. Rondeau	553 P.2d 688	63
1977	Espanola Housing Authority v. Atencio	568 P.2d 1233	62
1975	State Ex Rel. Anaya v. McBride· Dissent†	539 P.2d 1006	56
1973	Chevron Oil Co. v. Sutton Ex Rel. Sutton	515 P.2d 1283	56
1979	Reid v. New Mexico Board of Examiners in Optometry	589 P.2d 198	55
1978	Copeland v. Copeland	575 P.2d 99	51
1977	Nesbit v. City of Albuquerque	575 P.2d 1340	51
1976	State v. Baca	549 P.2d 282	51

Showing the 15 most-cited of 188 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 John B. McManus Jr. on?: John B. McManus Jr. 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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8 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).