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 2013 / Served to 2024

Luz Elena D. Chapa

Justice, Court of Appeals of Texas

Luz Elena D. Chapa was a Justice of the Court of Appeals of Texas, who joined the court in 2013. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1973 · age 53
Tenure: 2013–2024 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2013	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2019	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–

Education

Saint Mary's College	English	1995
Saint Mary's College		1999

Judicial Record

In our data, Chapa authored 396 published opinions for the court (1986–2017), plus 3 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: in the Interest of O.N.H., Children (166 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. 52 of these were attributed to Chapa 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
2013	in the Interest of O.N.H., Children†	401 S.W.3d 681	166
1991	Corpus Christi Area Teachers Credit Union v. Hernandez	814 S.W.2d 195	88
1993	Ralston Purina Co. v. McKendrick	850 S.W.2d 629	87
1989	MacIas v. State	776 S.W.2d 255	83
1996	San Antonio Express News v. Dracos	922 S.W.2d 242	81
1995	Hall v. Rutherford	911 S.W.2d 422	75
1992	Enterprise-Laredo Associates v. Hachar's, Inc.	839 S.W.2d 822	71
1994	Newman v. Tropical Visions, Inc.	891 S.W.2d 713	65
1988	City of San Antonio v. Vela	762 S.W.2d 314	65
1994	Crawford v. State	890 S.W.2d 941	64
1995	Harkins v. Crews	907 S.W.2d 51	61
1988	Querner Truck Lines, Inc. v. Alta Verde Industries, Inc.	747 S.W.2d 464	61
1996	Stroud v. VBFSB Holding Corp.	917 S.W.2d 75	60
1990	Lawson-Avila Construction, Inc. v. Stoutamire	791 S.W.2d 584	60
1995	Serna v. Webster	908 S.W.2d 487	59

Showing the 15 most-cited of 405 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 Luz Elena D. Chapa on?: Luz Elena D. Chapa was a 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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11 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).