How do judges of the New Mexico Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

New Mexico Supreme Court / Joined 1958 / Served to 1958

W Morris Shillinglaw

Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court

W Morris Shillinglaw was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1958. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1909–1963
Tenure: 1958–1958

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1958	New Mexico Supreme Court	–	–

Education

New Mexico Highlands University

Judicial Record

In our data, Shillinglaw authored 21 published opinions for the court (1958), plus 3 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Luna v. Flores (34 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. 8 of these were attributed to Shillinglaw 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
1958	Luna v. Flores	328 P.2d 82	34
1958	Scofield v. JW Jones Construction Company· Dissent†	328 P.2d 389	30
1958	State Highway Commission v. Southern Union Gas Co.	332 P.2d 1007	29
1958	State v. Buford· Concurrence†	331 P.2d 1110	25
1958	Ross v. State Racing Commission	330 P.2d 701	25
1958	State v. Barreras	328 P.2d 74	25
1958	Seal v. Blackburn Tank Truck Service	327 P.2d 797	22
1958	Battersby v. Bell Aircraft Corporation· Dissent†	332 P.2d 1028	19
1958	Livingston Ex Rel. Livingston v. Regents of the New Mexico College of Agriculture & Mechanic Arts	328 P.2d 78	19
1958	Johnston v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF PORTALES MSD· Dissent†	333 P.2d 1051	16
1958	Edmunds v. Bureau of Revenue	330 P.2d 131	16
1958	Melson v. Bank of New Mexico	332 P.2d 472	10
1958	Kimbell v. Smith	328 P.2d 942	10
1958	Martinez v. Archuleta	326 P.2d 1082	9
1958	Galloway v. White	330 P.2d 553	8

Showing the 15 most-cited of 25 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 New Mexico Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was W Morris Shillinglaw on?: W Morris Shillinglaw was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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Joined the court in 1958. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).