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 1953 / Served to 1954

Preston C. Clayton

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

Preston C. Clayton was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1953. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1903–1996
Tenure: 1953–1954 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1953	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

The University of Alabama
Faulkner University

Judicial Record

In our data, Clayton authored 28 published opinions for the court (1953–1954). Most cited: Montgomery City Lines, Inc. v. Davis (36 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. 15 of these were attributed to Clayton 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
1954	Montgomery City Lines, Inc. v. Davis	74 So. 2d 923	36
1954	Boriss v. Edwards	77 So. 2d 909	34
1954	White v. Williams	69 So. 2d 847	26
1954	Williams v. Williams	74 So. 2d 582	24
1954	Ex Parte Fewell	73 So. 2d 558	23
1953	Corte v. State	67 So. 2d 782	19
1954	Burnett v. Garrison	75 So. 2d 144	17
1954	Smith v. State	73 So. 2d 916	15
1954	Doughty v. Tarwater†	261 Ala. 263	15
1954	McCray v. State	74 So. 2d 491	14
1954	Miles v. State†	261 Ala. 670	13
1954	State v. Robinson Land & Lumber Co. of Alabama, Inc.	77 So. 2d 641	12
1953	Great American Ins. Co. v. Dedmon	70 So. 2d 421	8
1954	Alexander v. Davis†	261 Ala. 654	7
1954	First National Bank of Birmingham v. State	77 So. 2d 653	6

Showing the 15 most-cited of 28 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 Preston C. Clayton on?: Preston C. Clayton 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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1 year 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).