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 1962 / Served to 1981

Zollie Steakley

Justice, Supreme Court of Texas

Zollie Steakley was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, who joined the court in 1962. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1908–1992
Tenure: 1962–1981 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1962	Supreme Court of Texas	–	–

Education

Hardin-Simmons University
Hardin-Simmons University
Texas A & M University-Corpus Christi

Judicial Record

In our data, Steakley authored 186 published opinions for the court (1961–1980), plus 43 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Wiley v. Spratlan (594 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. 54 of these were attributed to Steakley 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
1976	Wiley v. Spratlan· Concurrence†	543 S.W.2d 349	594
1976	Lowe v. Texas Tech University	540 S.W.2d 297	569
1980	Brown v. American Transfer & Storage Co.· Dissent†	601 S.W.2d 931	443
1963	International Bankers Life Insurance Co. v. Holloway	368 S.W.2d 567	422
1977	U-Anchor Advertising, Inc. v. Burt	553 S.W.2d 760	419
1979	Standard Fire Insurance Co. v. Reese· Dissent†	584 S.W.2d 835	415
1975	Farley v. MM Cattle Company· Dissent†	529 S.W.2d 751	407
1975	Rosas v. Buddies Food Store	518 S.W.2d 534	405
1977	Eggemeyer v. Eggemeyer· Dissent†	554 S.W.2d 137	400
1975	State v. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co.	526 S.W.2d 526	321
1980	Smith v. Baldwin	611 S.W.2d 611	268
1967	New Amsterdam Casualty Co. v. Texas Industries, Inc.	414 S.W.2d 914	266
1979	Turner v. General Motors Corp.	584 S.W.2d 844	248
1980	Texas Bank and Trust Co. v. Moore	595 S.W.2d 502	243
1971	Benson v. Wanda Petroleum Company	468 S.W.2d 361	235

Showing the 15 most-cited of 233 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 Zollie Steakley on?: Zollie Steakley 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

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19 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).