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 1968 / Served to 1977

Thomas Morrow Reavley

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Thomas Morrow Reavley was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1968. He earned a law degree from Harvard University in 1948. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1921 · age 105
Tenure: 1968–1977 · 9 yrs
Education: The of Texas at Austin 1942 · Harvard

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1968	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Austin College
Southwestern University
Texas Wesleyan University
Pepperdine University
The University of Texas at Austin	B.A.	1942
Harvard University	J.D.	1948

Judicial Record

In our data, Reavley authored 22 published opinions for the court (1968–1977), plus 26 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Farley v. MM Cattle Company (407 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. 57 of these were attributed to Reavley 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
1975	Farley v. MM Cattle Company· Dissent†	529 S.W.2d 751	407
1975	Cockerham v. Cockerham· Dissent†	527 S.W.2d 162	340
1976	Abalos v. Oil Development Co. of Texas· Dissent†	544 S.W.2d 627	296
1976	Industrial Foundation of the South v. Texas Industrial Accident Board· Dissent†	540 S.W.2d 668	247
1976	Ex Parte Werblud· Dissent†	536 S.W.2d 542	243
1974	State v. Tennison· Concurrence†	509 S.W.2d 560	242
1977	Missouri Pacific Railroad v. American Statesman· Dissent†	552 S.W.2d 99	231
1977	Meshwert v. Meshwert· Concurrence†	549 S.W.2d 383	185
1976	Foster v. Laredo Newspapers, Inc.· Separate†	541 S.W.2d 809	147
1971	State v. Cook United, Inc.†	464 S.W.2d 105	146
1976	Henderson v. Travelers Insurance Co.· Concurrence†	544 S.W.2d 649	124
1974	Henderson v. Ford Motor Company†	519 S.W.2d 87	112
1975	Jacobs v. Theimer†	519 S.W.2d 846	111
1970	Dun and Bradstreet, Inc. v. O'NEIL· Dissent†	456 S.W.2d 896	103
1972	Ward v. Nava· Dissent†	488 S.W.2d 736	99

Showing the 15 most-cited of 57 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 Thomas Morrow Reavley on?: Thomas Morrow Reavley 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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9 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).