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 1983 / Served to 1988

William W. Kilgarlin

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

William W. Kilgarlin was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1932–2012
Tenure: 1983–1988 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kilgarlin authored 65 published opinions for the court (1983–1988), plus 16 dissents and 21 concurrences. Most cited: Nixon v. Mr. Property Management Co. (7,748 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. 39 of these were attributed to Kilgarlin 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
1985	Nixon v. Mr. Property Management Co.· Concurrence†	690 S.W.2d 546	7,748
1986	Pool v. Ford Motor Co.	715 S.W.2d 629	2,766
1985	Cavnar v. Quality Control Parking, Inc.· Separate†	696 S.W.2d 549	620
1988	Willis v. Maverick	760 S.W.2d 642	614
1983	Sax v. Votteler	648 S.W.2d 661	567
1988	Woods v. William M. Mercer, Inc.· Concurrence†	769 S.W.2d 515	563
1988	Herbert v. Herbert	754 S.W.2d 141	486
1983	English v. Fischer· Dissent†	660 S.W.2d 521	475
1983	Otis Engineering Corp. v. Clark	668 S.W.2d 307	472
1985	Sabine Pilot Service, Inc. v. Hauck· Concurrence†	687 S.W.2d 733	447
1988	Davis v. City of San Antonio	752 S.W.2d 518	443
1986	Alm v. Aluminum Co. of America	717 S.W.2d 588	428
1985	Dyson v. Olin Corp.· Concurrence†	692 S.W.2d 456	419
1985	RepublicBank Dallas, N.A. v. Interkal, Inc.	691 S.W.2d 605	351
1988	Wyatt v. Shaw Plumbing Co.· Concurrence†	760 S.W.2d 245	344

Showing the 15 most-cited of 104 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 William W. Kilgarlin on?: William W. Kilgarlin 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

5 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).