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 2007 / Active

Terri Willingham Thomas

Judge, Alabama Court of Civil Appeals

Terri Willingham Thomas is a Judge of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, serving since 2007. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2007 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2007	Alabama Court of Civil Appeals	–	–

Education

Athens State University
Samford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Thomas authored 702 published opinions for the court (2007–2018), plus 44 dissents and 72 concurrences. Most cited: Clements v. Clements (45 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. 583 of these were attributed to Thomas 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
2007	Clements v. Clements	990 So. 2d 383	45
2007	Cheek v. Dyess	1 So. 3d 1025	36
2014	Morgan v. Morgan· Concurrence†	183 So. 3d 945	34
2008	J.B. v. DeKalb County Department of Human Resources· Dissent†	12 So. 3d 100	33
2007	Peden v. Peden	972 So. 2d 106	31
2009	Adams v. Adams· Concurrence†	21 So. 3d 1247	30
2016	D.T. v. W.G.†	210 So. 3d 1143	28
2010	Poh v. Poh· Concurrence†	64 So. 3d 49	28
2007	F.G. v. State Department of Human Resources†	988 So. 2d 555	28
2007	Fi v. State Dept. of Human Resources	975 So. 2d 969	28
2010	K.P. v. Etowah County Department of Human Resources†	43 So. 3d 602	27
2009	A.B. v. J.B.· Concurrence†	40 So. 3d 723	27
2007	Dubose v. Dubose	964 So. 2d 42	27
2008	Edwards v. Intergraph Services Co., Inc.	4 So. 3d 495	26
2008	A.D.B.H. v. Houston County Department of Human Resources· Concurrence†	1 So. 3d 53	26

Showing the 15 most-cited of 820 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 Terri Willingham Thomas on?: Terri Willingham Thomas 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

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19 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).