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 1973 / Served to 1979

Sam Johnson

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Sam Johnson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1973. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1920–2002
Tenure: 1973–1979 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1973	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Baylor University

Judicial Record

In our data, Johnson authored 56 published opinions for the court (1973–1979), plus 23 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Holley v. Adams (4,606 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. 30 of these were attributed to Johnson 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
1976	Holley v. Adams	544 S.W.2d 367	4,606
1978	Davis v. Huey	571 S.W.2d 859	1,092
1975	Farley v. MM Cattle Company	529 S.W.2d 751	407
1974	Texas Department of Corrections v. Herring	513 S.W.2d 6	404
1979	Eichelberger v. Eichelberger· Dissent†	582 S.W.2d 395	400
1978	Collora v. Navarro	574 S.W.2d 65	356
1975	Cockerham v. Cockerham	527 S.W.2d 162	340
1979	Gutierrez v. Collins	583 S.W.2d 312	325
1976	Black Lake Pipe Line Co. v. Union Construction Co.	538 S.W.2d 80	315
1977	Lassiter v. Bliss· Dissent†	559 S.W.2d 353	287
1978	Barr v. Bernhard· Dissent†	562 S.W.2d 844	251
1977	Woods v. Littleton	554 S.W.2d 662	250
1976	Industrial Foundation of the South v. Texas Industrial Accident Board· Concurrence†	540 S.W.2d 668	247
1977	Hood v. Phillips	554 S.W.2d 160	212
1977	Glover v. National Insurance Underwriters· Dissent†	545 S.W.2d 755	200

Showing the 15 most-cited of 85 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 Sam Johnson on?: Sam Johnson 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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6 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).