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 1944 / Served to 1972

Robert Tennent Simpson Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

Robert Tennent Simpson Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1944. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1893 · age 133
Tenure: 1944–1972 · 28 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1944	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

The University of Alabama
The University of Alabama

Judicial Record

In our data, Simpson authored 1,095 published opinions for the court (1944–1971), plus 22 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: Shadle v. State (149 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. 539 of these were attributed to Simpson 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
1967	Shadle v. State	194 So. 2d 538	149
1970	Freeman v. Hall	238 So. 2d 330	143
1962	Cobern v. State	142 So. 2d 869	122
1971	Beasley v. MacDonald Engineering Co.	249 So. 2d 844	102
1960	Aaron v. State· Concurrence†	122 So. 2d 360	99
1945	Ex Parte Weissinger	22 So. 2d 510	88
1968	Bell v. Driskill	213 So. 2d 806	85
1953	Washington v. State†	259 Ala. 104	85
1947	Sorrell v. State	31 So. 2d 82	81
1963	Vest v. Gay	154 So. 2d 297	76
1961	Ball v. Jones	132 So. 2d 120	76
1958	Airheart v. Green	104 So. 2d 687	74
1945	Reedy v. State	20 So. 2d 528	72
1958	Garrett v. State	105 So. 2d 541	71
1944	Sullivan v. Alabama Power Co.	20 So. 2d 224	70

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,131 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 Robert Tennent Simpson Jr. on?: Robert Tennent Simpson Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.

Sources

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

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28 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).