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 2011 / Served to 2022

Melissa Goodwin

Justice, Court of Appeals of Texas

Melissa Goodwin was a Justice of the Court of Appeals of Texas, who joined the court in 2011. She previously served on the Texas 427th Judicial District Court. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1965 · age 61
Tenure: 2011–2022 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2008	Texas 427th Judicial District Court	–	–
2011	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2017	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–

Education

The University of Texas at Austin		1987
St Mary's University		1993

Judicial Record

In our data, Goodwin authored 44 published opinions for the court (2011–2018), plus 4 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Martin v. State (96 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. 51 of these were attributed to Goodwin 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
2011	Martin v. State†	335 S.W.3d 867	96
2018	Hawxhurst v. Austin's Boat Tours†	550 S.W.3d 220	43
2014	Texas State Board of Pharmacy v. Witcher· Dissent†	447 S.W.3d 520	36
2015	Abbott v. G.G.E†	463 S.W.3d 633	31
2013	Combs v. Texas Civil Rights Project· Concurrence†	410 S.W.3d 529	31
2013	City of Georgetown, Texas v. Lower Colorado River Authority· Dissent†	413 S.W.3d 803	28
2017	State v. Davis· Concurrence†	549 S.W.3d 688	27
2017	McFadden v. Olesky†	517 S.W.3d 287	25
2013	Southwest Pharmacy Solutions, Inc. v. Texas Health & Human Services Commission†	408 S.W.3d 549	24
2011	Drewery v. Adventist Health System/Texas, Inc.· Dissent†	344 S.W.3d 498	24
2017	City of New Braunfels v. Carowest Land, Ltd.†	549 S.W.3d 163	21
2013	State v. Marli Shealyn Elrod†	395 S.W.3d 869	17
2017	State v. Donaldson†	557 S.W.3d 33	15
2017	Ex Parte Justin River Carter†	514 S.W.3d 776	13
2012	Gerald Christopher Zuliani v. State· Concurrence†	383 S.W.3d 289	13

Showing the 15 most-cited of 51 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 Melissa Goodwin on?: Melissa Goodwin 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).