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 1981 / Served to 1986

William F. Riordan

Justice, New Mexico Supreme Court

William F. Riordan was a Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1941 · age 85
Tenure: 1981–1986 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	New Mexico Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Riordan authored 147 published opinions for the court (1981–1986), plus 12 dissents and 10 concurrences. Most cited: Matter of Adoption of Doe (839 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. 51 of these were attributed to Riordan 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
1984	Matter of Adoption of Doe	676 P.2d 1329	839
1984	State v. Martin· Concurrence†	686 P.2d 937	152
1982	Lopez Ex Rel. Lopez v. Maez	651 P.2d 1269	140
1983	State v. Simonson	669 P.2d 1092	91
1983	State v. Segotta	672 P.2d 1129	85
1985	United Nuclear Corp. v. Allendale Mutual Insurance	709 P.2d 649	82
1982	State v. Sisneros· Concurrence†	647 P.2d 403	79
1983	State v. Garcia	664 P.2d 969	73
1983	Hertz v. Hertz	657 P.2d 1169	68
1985	Estep v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance· Dissent†	703 P.2d 882	64
1985	Hood v. Fulkerson· Dissent†	699 P.2d 608	59
1983	Quintana v. New Mexico Department of Corrections	668 P.2d 1101	57
1985	State v. Cohen	711 P.2d 3	55
1984	Clovis National Bank v. Harmon	692 P.2d 1315	54
1983	State v. Hutchinson	661 P.2d 1315	53

Showing the 15 most-cited of 169 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 William F. Riordan on?: William F. Riordan 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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5 years on the New Mexico Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).