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 1969 / Served to 1986

Sears McGee

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Sears McGee was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1917–2006
Tenure: 1969–1986 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Rice University

Judicial Record

In our data, McGee authored 128 published opinions for the court (1969–1986), plus 38 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Nixon v. Mr. Property Management Co. (7,748 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. 48 of these were attributed to McGee 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
1985	Nixon v. Mr. Property Management Co.· Dissent†	690 S.W.2d 546	7,748
1985	Johnson v. Fourth Court of Appeals	700 S.W.2d 916	1,738
1981	Cameron v. Terrell & Garrett, Inc.	618 S.W.2d 535	936
1970	Malooly Brothers, Inc. v. Napier	461 S.W.2d 119	826
1986	Spoljaric v. Percival Tours, Inc.	708 S.W.2d 432	635
1976	Wiley v. Spratlan· Dissent†	543 S.W.2d 349	594
1981	Burk Royalty Co. v. Walls· Dissent†	616 S.W.2d 911	508
1983	Otis Engineering Corp. v. Clark· Dissent†	668 S.W.2d 307	472
1979	Baker v. Goldsmith	582 S.W.2d 404	469
1985	Dyson v. Olin Corp.	692 S.W.2d 456	419
1984	Bonniwell v. Beech Aircraft Corp.· Dissent†	663 S.W.2d 816	368
1978	Parker v. Highland Park, Inc.· Concurrence†	565 S.W.2d 512	348
1974	Mobil Chemical Company v. Bell	517 S.W.2d 245	329
1983	Borderlon v. Peck	661 S.W.2d 907	323
1979	Ex Parte Gordon	584 S.W.2d 686	320

Showing the 15 most-cited of 173 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 Sears McGee on?: Sears McGee 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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17 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).