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

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

Supreme Court of Indiana / Joined 1938 / Served to 1945

Curtis Grover Shake

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Curtis Grover Shake was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana, who joined the court in 1938. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1887–1978
Tenure: 1938–1945 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1938	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Education

Vincennes University

Judicial Record

In our data, Shake authored 212 published opinions for the court (1938–1944), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Warren v. Indiana Telephone Co. (350 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. 1 of these was attributed to Shake 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
1940	Warren v. Indiana Telephone Co.	26 N.E.2d 399	350
1938	Wilson, Admx. v. Rollings	14 N.E.2d 905	110
1943	Bedwell v. Debolt	50 N.E.2d 875	97
1944	Town of Flora v. Indiana Service Corp.	53 N.E.2d 161	92
1943	McKee v. Mutual Life Ins. Co. of New York	51 N.E.2d 474	74
1938	McFarlan v. Fowler Bank City Trust Co.	12 N.E.2d 752	74
1943	Russell v. Johnson	46 N.E.2d 219	70
1938	Sherfey v. City of Brazil	13 N.E.2d 568	66
1939	Baltimore Ohio R. Co. v. Reyher, Admx.	24 N.E.2d 284	64
1942	L.S. Ayres Company v. Hicks	40 N.E.2d 334	59
1944	Cole v. Sheehan Construction Company	53 N.E.2d 172	55
1939	Roth v. Local Union No. 1460 of Retail Clerks Union	24 N.E.2d 280	54
1942	Hedgecock v. Orlosky	44 N.E.2d 93	45
1940	State v. Torphy	28 N.E.2d 70	45
1939	Helms v. American Security Co.	22 N.E.2d 822	40

Showing the 15 most-cited of 213 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 Indiana reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Curtis Grover Shake on?: Curtis Grover Shake was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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