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 1990 / Served to 2003

Bob Abbott

Justice, Kansas Supreme Court

Bob Abbott was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1990. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1932 · age 94
Tenure: 1990–2003 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1990	Kansas Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Emporia State University
Washburn University

Judicial Record

In our data, Abbott authored 322 published opinions for the court (1990–2003), plus 24 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Gould (213 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. 84 of these were attributed to Abbott 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
2001	State v. Gould· Dissent†	23 P.3d 801	213
1994	State v. Timley	875 P.2d 242	178
2001	State Ex Rel. Stovall v. Meneley	22 P.3d 124	148
1993	State v. Donlay	853 P.2d 680	145
2001	State v. Kleypas· Dissent†	40 P.3d 139	144
1993	Nero v. Kansas State University	861 P.2d 768	143
1992	State v. Grissom	840 P.2d 1142	133
1992	Boatright v. Kansas Racing Commission· Dissent†	834 P.2d 368	125
1991	Brown v. United Methodist Homes for the Aged· Concurrence†	815 P.2d 72	121
1994	Ortega v. IBP, Inc.	874 P.2d 1188	115
1992	Honeycutt v. City of Wichita	836 P.2d 1128	115
1999	State v. Lumley	976 P.2d 486	109
2000	State v. Whitesell	13 P.3d 887	104
1997	State v. Aikins	932 P.2d 408	102
2001	State v. Scott	21 P.3d 516	100

Showing the 15 most-cited of 362 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 Bob Abbott on?: Bob Abbott 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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12 years on the Kansas Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).