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 2002 / Served to 2005

Steven Wayne Smith

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Steven Wayne Smith was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 2002. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1961 · age 65
Tenure: 2002–2005 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2002	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

The University of Texas at Arlington

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 8 published opinions for the court (2003–2004), plus 3 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: J.M. Davidson, Inc. v. Webster (1,500 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. 5 of these were attributed to Smith 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
2003	J.M. Davidson, Inc. v. Webster· Dissent†	128 S.W.3d 223	1,500
2004	Texas Department of Protective & Regulatory Services v. Mega Child Care, Inc.	145 S.W.3d 170	557
2004	Texas Workers' Compensation Commission v. Patient Advocates of Texas· Concurrence†	136 S.W.3d 643	505
2004	In Re Entergy Corp.	142 S.W.3d 316	343
2004	Fort Worth Osteopathic Hospital, Inc. v. Reese· Dissent†	148 S.W.3d 94	340
2004	Little v. Texas Department of Criminal Justice†	148 S.W.3d 374	320
2003	Sixth RMA Partners, L.P. v. Sibley	111 S.W.3d 46	303
2003	In Re Kuntz	124 S.W.3d 179	199
2004	FFE Transportation Services, Inc. v. Fulgham	154 S.W.3d 84	176
2004	Kerr-McGee Corp. v. Helton	133 S.W.3d 245	165
2003	West Orange-Cove Consolidated I.S.D. v. Alanis· Dissent†	107 S.W.3d 558	85
2004	1464-Eight, Ltd. v. Joppich	154 S.W.3d 101	28

Showing the 12 most-cited of 12 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 Steven Wayne Smith on?: Steven Wayne Smith 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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3 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).