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 1980 / Served to 1993

Oscar W. Adams Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

Oscar W. Adams Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1925–1997
Tenure: 1980–1993 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

Talladega College
Howard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Adams authored 858 published opinions for the court (1980–1994), plus 27 dissents and 19 concurrences. Most cited: Hanners v. Balfour Guthrie, Inc. (628 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. 363 of these were attributed to Adams 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
1990	Hanners v. Balfour Guthrie, Inc.· Dissent†	564 So. 2d 412	628
1991	Ex Parte Bird	594 So. 2d 676	258
1988	Ex Parte Couch	521 So. 2d 987	231
1991	Moore v. Mobile Infirmary Ass'n	592 So. 2d 156	156
1987	Gaston v. Ames	514 So. 2d 877	142
1981	Aspinwall v. Gowens	405 So. 2d 134	137
1984	Alabama Farm Bureau Mut. v. City of Hartselle	460 So. 2d 1219	132
1991	Cherry, Bekaert & Holland v. Brown	582 So. 2d 502	115
1983	Peebles v. Miley	439 So. 2d 137	109
1986	Gross v. Lowder Rlty. Better Homes & Gardens	494 So. 2d 590	100
1994	Ex Parte Giles	632 So. 2d 577	97
1985	Reynolds v. First Alabama Bank of Montgomery	471 So. 2d 1238	94
1993	Henderson by Hartsfield v. Alabama Power	627 So. 2d 878	92
1989	State v. Thomas	550 So. 2d 1067	84
1993	Huntley v. State	627 So. 2d 1013	81

Showing the 15 most-cited of 904 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 Oscar W. Adams Jr. on?: Oscar W. Adams 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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13 years on the Supreme Court of Alabama. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).