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 1968 / Served to 1971

Paul Tackett

Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court

Paul Tackett was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1968. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1910–1990
Tenure: 1968–1971 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1968	New Mexico Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Tackett authored 69 published opinions for the court (1957–1971), plus 3 dissents. Most cited: Stang v. Hertz Corporation (80 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. 22 of these were attributed to Tackett 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
1970	Stang v. Hertz Corporation	467 P.2d 14	80
1970	State v. Rodriguez	469 P.2d 148	58
1969	State v. Clark· Dissent†	455 P.2d 844	54
1969	Spears v. Canon De Carnue Land Grant	461 P.2d 415	35
1971	State Ex Rel. State Highway Commission v. Sherman	481 P.2d 104	31
1969	Seidenberg v. New Mexico Board of Medical Examiners	452 P.2d 469	31
1971	State v. Allen	482 P.2d 237	30
1969	State Ex Rel. Reynolds v. South Springs Co.	452 P.2d 478	30
1970	State Ex Rel. Maloney v. Sierra· Dissent†	477 P.2d 301	27
1971	Southern Union Gas Co. v. New Mexico Public Service Commission	482 P.2d 913	26
1970	Ed Black's Chevrolet Center, Inc. v. Melichar†	81 N.M. 602	25
1969	Pecos Construction Co. v. Mortgage Investment Co.	459 P.2d 842	24
1971	Williams Ex Rel. Williams v. Vandenhoven	482 P.2d 55	23
1969	Anaya v. City of Santa Fe	451 P.2d 303	23
1971	State v. Armstrong	482 P.2d 61	21

Showing the 15 most-cited of 72 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 Paul Tackett on?: Paul Tackett 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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3 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).