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 1954 / Served to 1975

Ruel C. Walker

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Ruel C. Walker was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1954. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1910–1998
Tenure: 1954–1975 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1954	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

The University of Texas at Austin

Judicial Record

In our data, Walker authored 229 published opinions for the court (1954–1975), plus 51 dissents and 18 concurrences. Most cited: Garza v. Alviar (3,215 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. 91 of these were attributed to Walker 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
1965	Garza v. Alviar	395 S.W.2d 821	3,215
1972	Swilley v. Hughes· Dissent†	488 S.W.2d 64	826
1971	Hidalgo v. Surety Savings and Loan Association· Concurrence†	462 S.W.2d 540	428
1975	Farley v. MM Cattle Company· Dissent†	529 S.W.2d 751	407
1975	Rosas v. Buddies Food Store· Concurrence†	518 S.W.2d 534	405
1974	Texas Department of Corrections v. Herring· Dissent†	513 S.W.2d 6	404
1962	Gaines v. Hamman· Dissent†	358 S.W.2d 557	344
1962	Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Penn	363 S.W.2d 230	340
1970	Busby v. Busby· Dissent†	457 S.W.2d 551	302
1970	Missouri Pacific Railroad v. Brownsville Navigation District	453 S.W.2d 812	300
1956	Womack v. Berry	291 S.W.2d 677	275
1967	Gaddis v. Smith· Dissent†	417 S.W.2d 577	273
1958	Lynch v. Ricketts	314 S.W.2d 273	265
1975	Lower Colorado River Authority v. City of San Marcos	523 S.W.2d 641	262
1964	Archer v. Griffith	390 S.W.2d 735	257

Showing the 15 most-cited of 299 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 Ruel C. Walker on?: Ruel C. Walker 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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21 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).