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 1988 / Served to 2004

Thomas R. Phillips

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Thomas R. Phillips was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1988. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1949 · age 77
Tenure: 1988–2004 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1988	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Baylor University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Phillips authored 127 published opinions for the court (1988–2004), plus 34 dissents and 24 concurrences. Most cited: Walker v. Packer (8,808 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. 98 of these were attributed to Phillips 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
1992	Walker v. Packer	827 S.W.2d 833	8,808
2004	In Re Prudential Insurance Co. of America· Dissent†	148 S.W.3d 124	4,288
2000	Bland Independent School District v. Blue· Dissent†	34 S.W.3d 547	3,565
2004	Ford Motor Co. v. Ridgway	135 S.W.3d 598	2,424
1989	Carr v. Brasher· Dissent†	776 S.W.2d 567	1,433
1997	Continental Coffee Products Co. v. Cazarez†	937 S.W.2d 444	1,207
1993	State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. S.S.· Concurrence†	858 S.W.2d 374	1,051
2004	Harris County v. Sykes	136 S.W.3d 635	1,020
1989	Casso v. Brand	776 S.W.2d 551	876
1995	Texas Workers' Compensation Commission v. Garcia†	893 S.W.2d 504	840
2000	Dubai Petroleum Co. v. Kazi	12 S.W.3d 71	777
2001	Texas Department of Criminal Justice v. Miller	51 S.W.3d 583	775
1998	Associated Indemnity Corp. v. CAT Contracting, Inc.†	964 S.W.2d 276	768
1996	Broders v. Heise†	924 S.W.2d 148	767
2002	Lee Lewis Construction, Inc. v. Harrison· Concurrence†	70 S.W.3d 778	754

Showing the 15 most-cited of 186 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 R. Phillips on?: Thomas R. Phillips 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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16 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).