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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Ohio / Joined 1981 / Served to 1987

Clifford F. Brown

Justice, Supreme Court of Ohio

Clifford F. Brown was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio (6 judges, selected by partisan election), who joined the court in 1981. He previously served on the Ohio Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1916–2011
Tenure: 1981–1987 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1964	Ohio Court of Appeals	–	–
1981	Supreme Court of Ohio	–	–

Education

University of Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame

Judicial Record

In our data, Brown authored 106 published opinions for the court (1973–1986), plus 39 dissents and 40 concurrences. Most cited: In re Adoption of Holcomb (1,100 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. 109 of these were attributed to Brown 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
1985	In re Adoption of Holcomb· Concurrence†	18 Ohio St. 3d 361	1,100
1985	Huffman v. Hair Surgeon, Inc.· Concurrence†	19 Ohio St. 3d 83	830
1986	State ex rel. Elliott v. Industrial Commission· Dissent†	26 Ohio St. 3d 76	587
1985	Irvine v. State· Concurrence†	19 Ohio St. 3d 15	379
1986	Osler v. City of Lorain· Concurrence†	28 Ohio St. 3d 345	261
1986	Light v. Ohio University· Concurrence†	28 Ohio St. 3d 66	255
1986	State v. Bock†	28 Ohio St. 3d 108	231
1986	State v. Martin· Dissent†	21 Ohio St. 3d 91	221
1986	Scott v. News-Herald· Concurrence†	25 Ohio St. 3d 243	207
1986	Mominee v. Scherbarth· Concurrence†	28 Ohio St. 3d 270	178
1985	State v. Rogers†	17 Ohio St. 3d 174	163
1986	Phung v. Waste Management, Inc.· Dissent†	23 Ohio St. 3d 100	162
1986	State v. Johnson†	24 Ohio St. 3d 87	140
1986	Ohio Furniture Co. v. Mindala· Concurrence†	22 Ohio St. 3d 99	125
1986	City of Middletown v. Ferguson· Concurrence†	25 Ohio St. 3d 71	122

Showing the 15 most-cited of 185 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 Ohio reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Clifford F. Brown on?: Clifford F. Brown was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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