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 2001 / Served to 2007

R. Bernard Harwood Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

R. Bernard Harwood Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 2001. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1939 · age 87
Tenure: 2001–2007 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Harwood authored 252 published opinions for the court (2001–2007), plus 15 dissents and 33 concurrences. Most cited: Liberty Nat. v. Univ. of Ala. Health Servs. (215 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. 92 of these were attributed to Harwood 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
2003	Liberty Nat. v. Univ. of Ala. Health Servs.	881 So. 2d 1013	215
2001	Armstrong Business Services, Inc. v. AmSouth Bank	817 So. 2d 665	122
2005	State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Motley	909 So. 2d 806	119
2001	Ex Parte Dobyne	805 So. 2d 763	103
2003	Tucker v. Cullman-Jefferson Counties Gas Dist.	864 So. 2d 317	91
2001	Ex Parte Showers	812 So. 2d 277	86
2004	New Properties, L.L.C. v. Stewart· Concurrence†	905 So. 2d 797	78
2004	Ex Parte McNabb· Concurrence†	887 So. 2d 998	75
2001	Ex Parte Ferguson	814 So. 2d 970	73
2001	Ex Parte Carter	807 So. 2d 534	71
2005	Continental Nat. Indem. Co. v. Fields· Concurrence†	926 So. 2d 1033	64
2004	Vesta Fire Ins. Corp. v. Milam & Co. Constr., Inc.	901 So. 2d 84	61
2002	Porterfield v. Audubon Indem. Co.	856 So. 2d 789	59
2006	Smith v. Mark Dodge, Inc.	934 So. 2d 375	55
2004	Birmingham News Co. v. Horn	901 So. 2d 27	55

Showing the 15 most-cited of 300 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 R. Bernard Harwood Jr. on?: R. Bernard Harwood 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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6 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).