How do judges of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Alabama Court of Civil Appeals / Joined 2013 / Active

Scott Donaldson

Judge, Alabama Court of Civil Appeals

Scott Donaldson is a Judge of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, serving since 2013. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2013 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2013	Alabama Court of Civil Appeals	–	–

Education

The University of Alabama
Samford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Donaldson authored 254 published opinions for the court (2013–2018), plus 11 dissents and 27 concurrences. Most cited: C.O. v. Jefferson County Department of Human Resources (57 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. 293 of these were attributed to Donaldson 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
2016	C.O. v. Jefferson County Department of Human Resources†	206 So. 3d 621	57
2014	Gallant v. Gallant· Concurrence†	184 So. 3d 387	31
2014	J.H. v. C.Y.†	161 So. 3d 233	31
2014	H.T. v. Cleburne County Department of Human Resources†	163 So. 3d 1054	29
2013	Rieger v. Rieger†	147 So. 3d 421	18
2016	J.D.S. v. J.W.L.†	204 So. 3d 386	15
2016	Montgomery County Department of Human Resources v. T.S.†	218 So. 3d 1252	14
2016	Walker v. Walker· Separate†	216 So. 3d 1262	14
2016	Marshall County Department of Human Resources v. J.V.· Concurrence†	203 So. 3d 1243	13
2015	Bearden v. DiGeronimo· Concurrence†	195 So. 3d 963	13
2015	Bonner v. Bonner†	170 So. 3d 697	13
2013	Walker v. Walker†	144 So. 3d 359	12
2016	Talladega County Department of Human Resources v. J.J.†	187 So. 3d 705	11
2013	D.B. v. D.G.†	141 So. 3d 1066	11
2016	Aramini v. Aramini†	220 So. 3d 322	9

Showing the 15 most-cited of 293 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 Alabama Court of Civil Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court is Scott Donaldson on?: Scott Donaldson is a Judge of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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