How do judges of the Missouri Court of Appeals reach the bench?

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

Missouri Court of Appeals / Joined 1991 / Active

Clifford H. Ahrens

Judge, Missouri Court of Appeals

Clifford H. Ahrens is a Judge of the Missouri Court of Appeals, serving since 1991. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1991 · 35 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Missouri Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

University of Missouri-Columbia
University of Missouri-Columbia

Judicial Record

In our data, Ahrens authored 746 published opinions for the court (1991–2015), plus 12 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Jennings (68 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. 247 of these were attributed to Ahrens 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
1991	State v. Jennings	815 S.W.2d 434	68
2008	Crow v. Crawford & Co.	259 S.W.3d 104	50
2006	Hertz Corp. v. Raks Hospitality, Inc.	196 S.W.3d 536	50
1998	Ken Cucchi Construction, Inc. v. O'Keefe	973 S.W.2d 520	48
2013	Delacroix v. Doncasters, Inc.· Concurrence†	407 S.W.3d 13	45
2007	State v. White	247 S.W.3d 557	45
1998	Hoag v. McBride & Son Inv. Co., Inc.	967 S.W.2d 157	44
1991	Bixler v. Bixler	810 S.W.2d 95	42
1994	P.S. v. Psychiatric Coverage, Ltd.	887 S.W.2d 622	39
2005	Eltiste v. Ford Motor Co.	167 S.W.3d 742	38
2004	Whitnell v. State	129 S.W.3d 409	35
1993	Cain v. State	859 S.W.2d 715	34
2000	Gray v. White· Dissent†	26 S.W.3d 806	32
1998	State v. Strughold	973 S.W.2d 876	32
1998	State v. Bowens	964 S.W.2d 232	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 767 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 Missouri Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Clifford H. Ahrens on?: Clifford H. Ahrens is a Judge of the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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