How do judges of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Alabama Court of Civil Appeals / Joined 1997 / Active

William C. Thompson

Judge, Alabama Court of Civil Appeals

William C. Thompson is a Judge of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, serving since 1997. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1962 · age 64
Tenure: Since 1997 · 29 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1997	Alabama Court of Civil Appeals	–	–

Education

The University of Alabama
Samford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Thompson authored 1,165 published opinions for the court (1962–2024), plus 145 dissents and 121 concurrences. Most cited: L.M. v. D.D.F. (168 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. 906 of these were attributed to Thompson 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
2002	L.M. v. D.D.F.†	840 So. 2d 171	168
2007	JC v. State Department of Human Resources	986 So. 2d 1172	123
2001	Robinson v. Robinson	795 So. 2d 729	87
2000	Somers v. McCoy	777 So. 2d 141	68
1998	Brown v. Brown	719 So. 2d 228	68
2004	Kb v. Cleburne County Dept. of Human Res.	897 So. 2d 379	67
1999	Littleton v. Littleton	741 So. 2d 1083	63
2002	L.B.S. v. L.M.S.†	826 So. 2d 178	60
2005	L.L.M. v. S.F.†	919 So. 2d 307	58
2009	Stone v. Stone†	26 So. 3d 1232	55
2001	Roberts v. Roberts	802 So. 2d 230	54
1999	Malone v. Gainey	726 So. 2d 725	52
2005	Gary v. Crouch	923 So. 2d 1130	51
2004	Heaston v. Nabors	889 So. 2d 588	50
1997	A.R.E. v. E.S.W.†	702 So. 2d 138	50

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,434 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 Alabama Court of Civil Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court is William C. Thompson on?: William C. Thompson is a Judge of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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29 years on the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).