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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Kentucky / Joined 2006 / Former Justice

Bill Cunningham

Justice, Supreme Court of Kentucky

Bill Cunningham was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, who joined the court in 2006. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1944 · age 82
Tenure: 2006 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	Supreme Court of Kentucky	–	–

Education

Murray State University
University of Kentucky

Judicial Record

In our data, Cunningham authored 127 published opinions for the court (2007–2017), plus 45 dissents and 56 concurrences. Most cited: Brown v. Commonwealth (259 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. 225 of these were attributed to Cunningham 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
2010	Brown v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	313 S.W.3d 577	259
2010	Fox v. Grayson· Dissent†	317 S.W.3d 1	225
2013	Shelton v. Kentucky Easter Seals Society, Inc.· Dissent†	413 S.W.3d 901	198
2009	Miller v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	283 S.W.3d 690	122
2016	Martin v. O'Daniel· Dissent†	507 S.W.3d 1	114
2009	Cardine v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	283 S.W.3d 641	105
2008	Pennington v. Marcum· Dissent†	266 S.W.3d 759	101
2014	Marson v. Thomason· Concurrence†	438 S.W.3d 292	94
2013	Johnson v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	405 S.W.3d 439	76
2010	Mullins v. Picklesimer· Concurrence†	317 S.W.3d 569	75
2012	Swan v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	384 S.W.3d 77	72
2012	Jefferson County Board of Education v. Fell ex rel. L.F.· Dissent†	391 S.W.3d 713	71
2010	Bowling v. Kentucky Department of Corrections· Concurrence†	301 S.W.3d 478	71
2017	Murphy v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	509 S.W.3d 34	67
2014	St. Clair v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	451 S.W.3d 597	61

Showing the 15 most-cited of 228 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 Kentucky reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Bill Cunningham on?: Bill Cunningham was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky.

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