How do judges of the Supreme Court of Texas reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Texas / Joined 1959 / Served to 1970

Robert W. Hamilton

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Robert W. Hamilton was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1959. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1899 · age 127
Tenure: 1959–1970 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1959	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Hamilton authored 117 published opinions for the court (1922–1970), plus 19 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Thigpen v. Locke (510 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. 24 of these were attributed to Hamilton 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
1962	Thigpen v. Locke	363 S.W.2d 247	510
1965	Heyden Newport Chemical Corp. v. Southern General Insurance Co.	387 S.W.2d 22	357
1962	Leyva v. Pacheco	358 S.W.2d 547	315
1967	Gaddis v. Smith	417 S.W.2d 577	273
1963	Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co. v. McCardell	369 S.W.2d 331	269
1970	Landry v. Travelers Insurance Company· Dissent†	458 S.W.2d 649	212
1969	Darryl v. Ford Motor Company· Dissent†	440 S.W.2d 630	209
1967	Massachusetts Bond. & Ins. Co. v. Orkin Exterm. Co.	416 S.W.2d 396	192
1960	James T. Taylor & Son, Inc. v. Arlington Independent School District	335 S.W.2d 371	184
1962	Crofts v. Court of Civil Appeals for the Eighth Supreme Judicial District	362 S.W.2d 101	179
1969	Dunn v. Dunn	439 S.W.2d 830	163
1969	Parker v. Employers Mutual Liability Insurance Co. of Wisconsin	440 S.W.2d 43	159
1966	Champlin Oil & Refining Company v. Chastain· Concurrence†	403 S.W.2d 376	143
1968	Texas Oil & Gas Corporation v. Vela· Dissent†	429 S.W.2d 866	134
1970	Denton Publishing Company v. Boyd· Dissent†	460 S.W.2d 881	125

Showing the 15 most-cited of 138 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 Texas reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Robert W. Hamilton on?: Robert W. Hamilton was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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