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 1972 / Served to 1991

Richard L. Jones

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

Richard L. Jones was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1923 · age 103
Tenure: 1972–1991 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Jones authored 815 published opinions for the court (1973–1996), plus 129 dissents and 141 concurrences. Most cited: Bussey v. John Deere Co. (587 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. 560 of these were attributed to Jones 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
1988	Bussey v. John Deere Co.	531 So. 2d 860	587
1975	Armstrong v. State· Concurrence†	312 So. 2d 620	416
1986	Ex Parte Terry· Concurrence†	494 So. 2d 628	273
1989	Berner v. Caldwell	543 So. 2d 686	249
1982	Boshell v. Keith	418 So. 2d 89	217
1981	Ex Parte Kyzer· Concurrence†	399 So. 2d 330	217
1976	Atkins v. American Motors Corp.	335 So. 2d 134	206
1985	Ex Parte Harrell· Dissent†	470 So. 2d 1309	190
1982	National Sav. Life Ins. Co. v. Dutton· Concurrence†	419 So. 2d 1357	175
1985	Ex Parte Riley	464 So. 2d 92	157
1988	Ex Parte Rutledge	523 So. 2d 1118	149
1988	Barnes v. Dale	530 So. 2d 770	146
1989	Ex Parte Presse	554 So. 2d 406	143
1983	Ex Parte Bush	431 So. 2d 563	134
1983	Phillips v. Smalley Maintenance Services, Inc.	435 So. 2d 705	131

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,085 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 Richard L. Jones on?: Richard L. Jones 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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19 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).