How do judges of the Supreme Court of South Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is legislative election.

Supreme Court of South Carolina / Joined 2000 / Former Justice

Costa M. Pleicones

Justice, Supreme Court of South Carolina

Costa M. Pleicones was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, who joined the court in 2000. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1944 · age 82
Tenure: 2000 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	Supreme Court of South Carolina	–	–

Education

Wofford College

Judicial Record

In our data, Pleicones authored 367 published opinions for the court (2000–2017), plus 158 dissents and 129 concurrences. Most cited: Lewis v. Lewis (543 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. 609 of these were attributed to Pleicones 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
2011	Lewis v. Lewis· Dissent†	709 S.E.2d 650	543
2005	State v. Gentry· Dissent†	610 S.E.2d 494	229
2007	State v. Pittman· Dissent†	647 S.E.2d 144	186
2012	Atlantic Coast Builders & Contractors, LLC v. Lewis· Concurrence†	398 S.C. 323	154
2006	Law v. South Carolina Department of Corrections· Concurrence†	629 S.E.2d 642	148
2002	Sabb v. South Carolina State University· Dissent†	567 S.E.2d 231	135
2003	Dawkins v. Fields· Dissent†	580 S.E.2d 433	130
2011	State v. Jennings†	716 S.E.2d 91	122
2006	Erickson v. Jones Street Publishers, LLC· Concurrence†	629 S.E.2d 653	118
2006	Madison Ex Rel. Bryant v. Babcock Center· Concurrence†	638 S.E.2d 650	112
2000	Joiner Ex Rel. Rivas v. Rivas· Concurrence†	536 S.E.2d 372	112
2012	State v. Black· Dissent†	400 S.C. 10	110
2008	Town of Summerville v. City of North Charleston†	662 S.E.2d 40	110
2001	In Re the Care & Treatment of McCracken	551 S.E.2d 235	107
2013	South Carolina Department of Social Services v. Sarah W.· Dissent†	402 S.C. 324	106

Showing the 15 most-cited of 654 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 South Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is legislative election.
Which court was Costa M. Pleicones on?: Costa M. Pleicones was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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