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

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

Kansas Supreme Court / Joined 1948 / Served to 1948

Austin M. Cowan

Justice, Kansas Supreme Court

Austin M. Cowan was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1948. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1885 · age 141
Tenure: 1948–1948

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1948	Kansas Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Cowan authored 18 published opinions for the court (1948), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Wilson v. Hudspeth (22 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. 19 of these were attributed to Cowan 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
1948	Wilson v. Hudspeth†	165 Kan. 666	22
1948	Buck v. Miller Amusement Co.†	166 Kan. 205	15
1948	Bankers Investment Co. v. Meeker†	166 Kan. 209	12
1948	Cow Creek Valley Flood Prevention Ass'n v. City of Hutchinson†	166 Kan. 78	10
1948	State v. McGlade†	165 Kan. 425	9
1948	Wert v. Phillips†	166 Kan. 159	8
1948	Heidner v. Hewitt Chevrolet Co.†	166 Kan. 11	7
1948	Farmers & Merchants State Bank v. Hunter†	166 Kan. 52	7
1948	Dionne v. Hudspeth†	166 Kan. 72	6
1948	Brown v. Dye†	165 Kan. 507	3
1948	Porth v. Local Union 201†	166 Kan. 166	2
1948	Swigart v. Knox· Dissent†	165 Kan. 410	2
1948	Houghton v. Hudspeth†	165 Kan. 619	1
1948	Central Kansas Electric Cooperative Ass'n v. State Corp. Commission†	165 Kan. 471	1
1948	Foster v. Hudspeth†	166 Kan. 60	0

Showing the 15 most-cited of 19 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 Kansas Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Austin M. Cowan on?: Austin M. Cowan was a Justice of the Kansas 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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Joined the court in 1948. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).