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 1948 / Served to 1958

W. St. John Garwood

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

W. St. John Garwood was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1948. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1896–1987
Tenure: 1948–1958 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1948	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Georgetown University

Judicial Record

In our data, Garwood authored 109 published opinions for the court (1948–1958), plus 36 dissents and 10 concurrences. Most cited: Benoit v. Wilson (549 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. 66 of these were attributed to Garwood 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
1951	Benoit v. Wilson· Dissent†	239 S.W.2d 792	549
1952	Burt v. Lochausen· Dissent†	249 S.W.2d 194	347
1951	Fitz-Gerald v. Hull· Concurrence†	237 S.W.2d 256	300
1954	City of Austin v. Cannizzo· Dissent†	267 S.W.2d 808	277
1955	Board of Water Eng of State v. Cty of San Antonio	283 S.W.2d 722	209
1956	Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Co. v. McFerrin· Concurrence†	291 S.W.2d 931	186
1952	Landers v. East Texas Salt Water Disposal Co.· Dissent†	248 S.W.2d 731	166
1953	Knox v. Long· Dissent†	257 S.W.2d 289	160
1953	Benge v. Scharbauer· Dissent†	259 S.W.2d 166	144
1953	Roosth & Genecov Production Co. v. White	262 S.W.2d 99	131
1954	Tigner v. First Nat. Bank of Angleton· Concurrence†	264 S.W.2d 85	130
1958	Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway Company v. Deen	312 S.W.2d 933	125
1953	Continental Casualty Co. v. Warren	254 S.W.2d 762	119
1957	McMahon v. Christmann· Dissent†	303 S.W.2d 341	118
1948	Chevalier v. Lane's, Inc.	213 S.W.2d 530	111

Showing the 15 most-cited of 156 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 W. St. John Garwood on?: W. St. John Garwood 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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10 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).