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 1977

LaFel Earl Oman

Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court

LaFel Earl Oman was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1912–1991
Tenure: 1971–1977 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Oman authored 189 published opinions for the court (1965–1977), plus 10 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Goodman v. Brock Ex Rel. Estate of Brock (276 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. 54 of these were attributed to Oman 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
1972	Goodman v. Brock Ex Rel. Estate of Brock	498 P.2d 676	276
1976	Hicks v. State· Concurrence†	544 P.2d 1153	165
1974	State Ex Rel. Sego v. Kirkpatrick	524 P.2d 975	138
1976	Ammerman v. Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc.	551 P.2d 1354	135
1966	Loucks v. Albuquerque National Bank	418 P.2d 191	133
1975	Duke City Lumber Company, Inc. v. Terrel	540 P.2d 229	104
1975	State v. Dorsey	539 P.2d 204	89
1971	Williamson v. Smith· Concurrence†	491 P.2d 1147	89
1967	Clovis National Bank v. Thomas	425 P.2d 726	87
1975	McGeehan v. Bunch· Dissent†	540 P.2d 238	81
1977	Getz v. Equitable Life Assur. Soc. of US	561 P.2d 468	64
1977	Skyhook Corp. v. Jasper	560 P.2d 934	62
1977	State v. Bloom	561 P.2d 465	61
1973	State v. Lopez	508 P.2d 1292	60
1972	Garrett v. Nissen Corporation	498 P.2d 1359	60

Showing the 15 most-cited of 201 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 LaFel Earl Oman on?: LaFel Earl Oman 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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6 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).