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

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Supreme Court of Delaware / Joined 1951 / Served to 1963

Clarence A. Southerland

Justice, Supreme Court of Delaware

Clarence A. Southerland was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Delaware, who joined the court in 1951. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1951–1963 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1951	Supreme Court of Delaware	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Southerland authored 372 published opinions for the court (1951–2010). Most cited: Sterling v. Mayflower Hotel Corp. (196 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. 27 of these were attributed to Southerland 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
1952	Sterling v. Mayflower Hotel Corp.	93 A.2d 107	196
1958	Henne v. Balick	146 A.2d 394	113
1960	General Motors Corporation v. Freeman	164 A.2d 686	111
1952	John Roane, Inc. v. Tweed†	89 A.2d 548	91
1960	Beard v. Elster	160 A.2d 731	85
1956	Johnston v. Greene	121 A.2d 919	71
1953	Monacelli v. Grimes	99 A.2d 255	70
1953	Maurer v. International Re-Insurance Corp.†	95 A.2d 827	68
1961	Robelen Piano Company v. Di Fonzo	169 A.2d 240	60
1962	Bennett v. Propp	187 A.2d 405	56
1954	Danby v. Osteopathic Hospital Ass'n of Delaware	104 A.2d 903	54
1954	Curran v. Woolley	104 A.2d 771	54
1957	American Hardware Corp. v. Savage Arms Corp.†	136 A.2d 690	50
1962	Shellhorn & Hill, Inc. v. State	187 A.2d 71	48
1954	Pitts v. White	109 A.2d 786	48

Showing the 15 most-cited of 372 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 Delaware reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Clarence A. Southerland on?: Clarence A. Southerland was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Delaware.

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