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 1989 / Served to 2002

Joseph Francis Baca

Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court

Joseph Francis Baca was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1938 · age 88
Tenure: 1989–2002 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	New Mexico Supreme Court	–	–

Education

George Washington University

Judicial Record

In our data, Baca authored 172 published opinions for the court (1979–2002), plus 21 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Cunningham (761 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. 53 of these were attributed to Baca 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
2000	State v. Cunningham	998 P.2d 176	761
2000	State v. Jason L.· Dissent†	2 P.3d 856	316
1994	State v. Apodaca	887 P.2d 756	307
2001	State v. Benally· Dissent†	34 P.3d 1134	299
1994	State v. Attaway· Concurrence†	870 P.2d 103	264
1990	Farmers, Inc. v. Dal MacHine & Fabricating, Inc.	800 P.2d 1063	254
2002	State v. Trujillo	42 P.3d 814	229
1997	State v. Salazar	945 P.2d 996	228
1993	State v. Hernandez	846 P.2d 312	192
1990	Schmitz v. Smentowski	785 P.2d 726	173
2001	State v. JAVIER M.	33 P.3d 1	165
1998	Trujillo v. City of Albuquerque	965 P.2d 305	163
1992	State v. Gonzales	824 P.2d 1023	157
1991	State v. Ortega· Concurrence†	817 P.2d 1196	155
2000	Meiboom v. Watson	994 P.2d 1154	138

Showing the 15 most-cited of 204 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 Joseph Francis Baca on?: Joseph Francis Baca 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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13 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).