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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Alabama / Joined 1972 / Served to 1972

Ormond Somerville Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

Ormond Somerville Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1904 · age 122
Tenure: 1972–1972

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

The University of Alabama
The University of Alabama
The University of Alabama
The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Somerville authored 13 published opinions for the court (1972), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: Nunn v. Keith (66 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. 7 of these were attributed to Somerville 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	Nunn v. Keith	268 So. 2d 792	66
1972	Crossett v. St. Louis Fire and Marine Insurance Co.· Concurrence†	269 So. 2d 869	45
1972	City of Mobile v. Havard	268 So. 2d 805	43
1972	Merchants Bank v. Cotton	269 So. 2d 875	31
1972	Aetna Ins. Co. v. Pete Wilson Roofing & Heat. Co., Inc.	272 So. 2d 232	30
1972	Boaz Nursing Home, Inc. v. Recovery Inns of America, Inc.	266 So. 2d 588	14
1972	Alabama Farm Bureau Mutual Casualty Insurance v. Adams	267 So. 2d 151	13
1972	Reese v. State†	289 Ala. 750	8
1972	Mathis v. Board of School Com'rs of Mobile County†	289 Ala. 552	6
1972	Jay v. Jay	268 So. 2d 788	5
1972	Lee v. State†	289 Ala. 597	1
1972	Kyzer v. Kyzer†	289 Ala. 596	0
1972	Congo v. State†	289 Ala. 740	0
1972	Harmon v. State†	289 Ala. 744	0

Showing the 14 most-cited of 14 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 Alabama reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Ormond Somerville Jr. on?: Ormond Somerville Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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Joined the court in 1972. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).