How do judges of the Court of Appeals of Texas reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Court of Appeals of Texas / Joined 2009 / Served to 2026

Tracy E. Christopher

Chief Justice, Court of Appeals of Texas

Tracy E. Christopher was a Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals of Texas (56 judges, selected by partisan election), who joined the court in 2009. She previously served on the Texas 295th Judicial District Court. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1956 · age 70
Tenure: 2009–2026 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Texas 295th Judicial District Court	–	–
2009	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2021	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–

Education

University of Notre Dame	with honors	1978
The University of Texas at Austin	with honors	1981

Judicial Record

In our data, Christopher authored 209 published opinions for the court (2010–2018), plus 22 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: In Re Le (130 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. 201 of these were attributed to Christopher 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
2011	In Re Le· Dissent†	335 S.W.3d 808	130
2014	in the Interest of G.M.G., a Child· Concurrence†	444 S.W.3d 46	113
2015	in the Estate of Rosa Elvia Guerrero· Dissent†	465 S.W.3d 693	112
2013	Washington DC Party Shuttle, LLC, Party Shuttle Tours, LLC and Creativerse Internet Systems, LLC v. Iguide Tours, LLC, Tyree Cook, and Abise Eshetu†	406 S.W.3d 723	103
2011	Guyton v. Monteau	332 S.W.3d 687	78
2010	Horizon Shipbuilding, Inc. v. BLYN II HOLDING, LLC	324 S.W.3d 840	70
2013	Gerald Byron Barras v. Leslea Loring Barras†	396 S.W.3d 154	67
2015	Frederic Scott Deaver v. Riddhi Desai and Shilpi Pankaj Desai†	483 S.W.3d 668	63
2010	Nwosoucha v. State	325 S.W.3d 816	62
2010	DeLeon v. State· Dissent†	322 S.W.3d 375	62
2014	Brandon Lynn Darkins v. State†	430 S.W.3d 559	60
2013	Ernest Navy v. College of the Mainland· Concurrence†	407 S.W.3d 893	57
2015	Sarah Lansden Baker v. Mark Mitchell Baker†	469 S.W.3d 269	54
2012	Fardad Aduli v. Valerie Aduli†	368 S.W.3d 805	52
2012	Jose Isaas Herrera AKA Jose Isaas Herrera, Sr. v. State†	367 S.W.3d 762	52

Showing the 15 most-cited of 248 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 Court of Appeals of Texas reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Tracy E. Christopher on?: Tracy E. Christopher was a Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals 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 Court of Appeals of Texas. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).