How do judges of the Supreme Court of Alabama reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Alabama / Joined 1915 / Served to 1945

William H. Thomas

Justice, Supreme Court of Alabama

William H. Thomas was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, who joined the court in 1915. He previously served on the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1867–1945
Tenure: 1915–1945 · 30 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1914	Alabama Court of Civil Appeals	–	–
1915	Supreme Court of Alabama	–	–

Education

Emory University
Emory University
Emory University
Emory University

Judicial Record

In our data, Thomas authored 2,131 published opinions for the court (1915–1945), plus 54 dissents and 19 concurrences. Most cited: McMillan v. Aiken (366 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. 185 of these were attributed to Thomas 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
1920	McMillan v. Aiken	88 So. 135	366
1944	Alabama State Federation of Labor v. McAdory· Dissent	18 So. 2d 810	243
1922	Anderson v. State	95 So. 171	200
1921	Hodge v. Joy	92 So. 171	194
1932	Roan v. State	143 So. 454	148
1942	Wilson v. State	8 So. 2d 422	141
1927	Grimsley v. First Ave. Coal & Lumber Co.	115 So. 90	102
1923	Lewis v. Martin	98 So. 635	102
1916	Georgia Cotton Co. v. Lee†	196 Ala. 599	97
1927	Batson v. State Ex Rel. Davis	113 So. 300	84
1915	Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway v. Crosby†	194 Ala. 338	83
1915	Shipp v. Shelton†	193 Ala. 658	79
1923	Knowles v. Blue	95 So. 481	78
1921	Leith v. State	90 So. 687	78
1916	Smith v. State†	197 Ala. 193	76

Showing the 15 most-cited of 2,210 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 Alabama reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was William H. Thomas on?: William H. Thomas was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.

Sources

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

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