How do judges of the New Mexico Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

New Mexico Supreme Court / Joined 1996 / Served to 2012

Patricio M. Serna

Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court

Patricio M. Serna was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1996. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1939 · age 87
Tenure: 1996–2012 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1996	New Mexico Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Serna authored 127 published opinions for the court (1997–2012), plus 13 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Tollardo (506 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. 47 of these were attributed to Serna 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
2012	State v. Tollardo	275 P.3d 110	506
2004	State v. Barber· Concurrence†	92 P.3d 633	344
2000	State v. Jason L.· Concurrence†	2 P.3d 856	316
2001	State v. Benally· Dissent†	34 P.3d 1134	299
1997	State v. Mora	950 P.2d 789	244
2003	Herrera Ex Rel. Estate of Ruiz v. Quality Pontiac	73 P.3d 181	202
2001	Lytle v. Jordan	22 P.3d 666	192
2011	State v. Leyva	2011 NMSC 9	190
1999	State v. Salgado	974 P.2d 661	177
1999	State v. Coffin	991 P.2d 477	171
2000	State v. Jacobs· Concurrence†	10 P.3d 127	170
2009	State v. Hubble	206 P.3d 579	169
2002	Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club v. New Mexico Mining Commission· Dissent†	61 P.3d 806	165
2005	State v. Graham	109 P.3d 285	149
2001	State v. Santillanes	27 P.3d 456	144

Showing the 15 most-cited of 154 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 New Mexico Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Patricio M. Serna on?: Patricio M. Serna was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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16 years on the New Mexico Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).