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

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Supreme Court of Indiana / Joined 1871 / Served to 1877

Alexander C. Downey

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Alexander C. Downey was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana, who joined the court in 1871. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1817–1898
Tenure: 1871–1877 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1871	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Downey authored 873 published opinions for the court (1871–1876), plus 3 dissents. Most cited: State Board of Agriculture v. Citizens Street Railway Co. (86 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. 878 of these were attributed to Downey 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
1874	State Board of Agriculture v. Citizens Street Railway Co.†	47 Ind. 407	86
1874	Cox v. Louisville, New Albany, & Chicago Railroad†	48 Ind. 178	75
1875	Boardman v. Griffin†	52 Ind. 101	53
1873	McLaughlin v. State†	45 Ind. 338	52
1871	Lytle v. Lytle†	37 Ind. 281	50
1873	Groesch v. State†	42 Ind. 547	46
1871	Griffith v. State†	36 Ind. 406	46
1874	State ex rel. Pitman v. Tucker†	46 Ind. 355	44
1872	Jeffersonville, Madison, & Indianapolis Railroad v. Riley†	39 Ind. 568	42
1874	Knight v. Indiana Coal & Iron Co.†	47 Ind. 105	41
1872	Columbus, Chicago, & Indiana Central Railway Co. v. Powell†	40 Ind. 37	40
1873	Hathaway v. Toledo, Wabash, & Western Railway Co.†	46 Ind. 25	39
1871	Wolf v. Schofield†	38 Ind. 175	37
1874	Goodwin v. Goodwin†	48 Ind. 584	35
1871	Milligan v. Poole†	35 Ind. 64	35

Showing the 15 most-cited of 878 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 Indiana reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Alexander C. Downey on?: Alexander C. Downey was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana.

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