How do judges of the Supreme Court of Texas reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Texas / Joined 1989 / Served to 2026

Nathan Lincoln Hecht

Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Nathan Lincoln Hecht was a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1989. He previously served on the Texas 95th Judicial District Court and Court of Appeals of Texas. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1949 · age 77
Tenure: 1989–2026 · 37 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	Texas 95th Judicial District Court	–	–
1986	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
1989	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–
1995	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–
2000	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–
2007	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–
2013	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–
2021	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Yale University	Philosophy, with honors	1971
Southern Methodist University	cum laude	1974

Judicial Record

In our data, Hecht authored 349 published opinions for the court (1987–2024), plus 105 dissents and 88 concurrences. Most cited: Lehmann v. Har-Con Corp. (4,923 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. 342 of these were attributed to Hecht 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
2001	Lehmann v. Har-Con Corp.	39 S.W.3d 191	4,923
2002	In the interest of C.H.· Concurrence†	89 S.W.3d 17	4,662
2004	In Re Prudential Insurance Co. of America	148 S.W.3d 124	4,288
2000	Bland Independent School District v. Blue	34 S.W.3d 547	3,565
2004	Ford Motor Co. v. Ridgway· Concurrence†	135 S.W.3d 598	2,424
1998	Maritime Overseas Corp. v. Ellis· Dissent†	971 S.W.2d 402	1,981
2002	Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission v. IT-Davy· Concurrence†	74 S.W.3d 849	1,966
2009	Mann Frankfort Stein & Lipp Advisors, Inc. v. Fielding· Concurrence†	289 S.W.3d 844	1,889
1993	McConnell v. Southside Independent School District· Dissent†	858 S.W.2d 337	1,797
1997	American Tobacco Co., Inc. v. Grinnell· Concurrence†	951 S.W.2d 420	1,558
1999	Rhone-Poulenc, Inc. v. Steel· Dissent†	997 S.W.2d 217	1,513
1998	Bocquet v. Herring†	972 S.W.2d 19	1,497
1998	Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. v. Malone· Concurrence†	972 S.W.2d 35	1,315
1991	TransAmerican Natural Gas Corp. v. Powell	811 S.W.2d 913	1,144
1998	Uniroyal Goodrich Tire Co. v. Martinez· Dissent†	977 S.W.2d 328	1,132

Showing the 15 most-cited of 544 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 Supreme Court of Texas reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Nathan Lincoln Hecht on?: Nathan Lincoln Hecht was a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 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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37 years on the Supreme Court of Texas. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).