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

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

Supreme Court of Oklahoma / Joined 1953 / Served to 1981

Ben T. Williams

Justice, Supreme Court of Oklahoma

Ben T. Williams was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, who joined the court in 1953. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1911 · age 115
Tenure: 1953–1981 · 28 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1953	Supreme Court of Oklahoma	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Williams authored 1,149 published opinions for the court (1902–1981), plus 87 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: Kirkland v. General Motors Corporation (340 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. 291 of these were attributed to Williams 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
1974	Kirkland v. General Motors Corporation· Concurrence†	521 P.2d 1353	340
1908	State Ex Rel. Caldwell v. Hooker, County Judge	98 P. 964	101
1910	Kolachny v. Galbreath	110 P. 902	94
1908	In Re County Com'rs of Counties Comprising Seventh Judicial Dist.	98 P. 557	94
1911	Frank Oil Co. v. Belleview Gas & Oil Co.	119 P. 260	76
1977	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Hall	567 P.2d 975	73
1912	McNeal v. McKain	126 P. 742	69
1912	Duff v. Keaton	124 P. 291	65
1908	Oklahoma City v. Shields	100 P. 559	64
1980	State Ex Rel. Howard v. Oklahoma Corp. Commission	614 P.2d 45	63
1955	Davis v. Gwaltney	291 P.2d 820	63
1913	Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co. v. Duran	134 P. 876	62
1910	Powell v. Nichols	110 P. 762	60
1909	McCann v. McCann	103 P. 694	60
1913	Muskogee Electric Traction Co. v. Reed	130 P. 157	58

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,256 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 Oklahoma reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Ben T. Williams on?: Ben T. Williams was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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