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 2002 / Served to 2022

Josh R. Morriss III

Chief Justice, Court of Appeals of Texas

Josh R. Morriss III was a Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals of Texas, who joined the court in 2002. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2002–2022 · 20 yrs
Education: Southern Methodist 1972

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2002	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2003	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2005	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2011	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2017	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–

Education

Southern Methodist University	Business, Management, and Finance	1972
Southern Methodist University		1973
The University of Texas at Austin		1975

Judicial Record

In our data, Morriss authored 403 published opinions for the court (2002–2018), plus 2 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: In Re Blakeney (464 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. 337 of these were attributed to Morriss 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
2008	In Re Blakeney†	254 S.W.3d 659	464
2003	Pierce v. State†	113 S.W.3d 431	184
2006	Mullins v. State†	208 S.W.3d 469	152
2003	in the Interest of A.B., R.B., T.B., C.R. and D.M., Children†	125 S.W.3d 769	152
2002	Teixeira v. State	89 S.W.3d 190	147
2006	Thoyakulathu v. Brennan†	192 S.W.3d 849	144
2006	In Re Pilgrim's Pride Corp.†	187 S.W.3d 197	137
2013	in the Interest of N.L.D., a Child· Dissent†	412 S.W.3d 810	128
2002	Duren v. State	87 S.W.3d 719	117
2004	in the Interest of L.C., L.C., Children†	145 S.W.3d 790	115
2003	Josey v. State	97 S.W.3d 687	108
2004	Hudson v. State	128 S.W.3d 367	98
2015	Barney Samuel Bradshaw v. State†	466 S.W.3d 875	96
2013	Sharol Martin v. State†	405 S.W.3d 944	91
2003	Compton v. State†	120 S.W.3d 375	87

Showing the 15 most-cited of 407 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 was Josh R. Morriss III on?: Josh R. Morriss III was a Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals 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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20 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).