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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Kentucky / Joined 1989 / Served to 1993

Dan Jack Combs

Justice, Supreme Court of Kentucky

Dan Jack Combs was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, who joined the court in 1989. He previously served on the Kentucky Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1924–2002
Tenure: 1989–1993 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Kentucky Court of Appeals	–	–
1989	Supreme Court of Kentucky	–	–

Education

Samford University
Samford University
Samford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Combs authored 306 published opinions for the court (1951–2009), plus 35 dissents and 10 concurrences. Most cited: Western Baptist Hospital v. Kelly (434 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. 183 of these were attributed to Combs 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
1992	Western Baptist Hospital v. Kelly· Concurrence†	827 S.W.2d 685	434
1990	Sanders v. Commonwealth	801 S.W.2d 665	135
1991	Nucor Corp. v. General Electric Co.· Dissent†	812 S.W.2d 136	114
1992	Commonwealth v. Wasson· Concurrence†	842 S.W.2d 487	98
1991	Snodgrass v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	814 S.W.2d 579	84
1990	Gentry v. Gentry· Concurrence†	798 S.W.2d 928	84
1992	Billings v. Commonwealth†	843 S.W.2d 890	83
1953	Brown v. Gosser	262 S.W.2d 480	81
1991	Mitchell v. Hadl· Dissent†	816 S.W.2d 183	75
1987	Gall v. Scroggy	725 S.W.2d 867	71
1992	Crayton v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	846 S.W.2d 684	70
1992	Cook v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	826 S.W.2d 329	68
1991	Jones v. Bituminous Casualty Corp.· Dissent†	821 S.W.2d 798	65
1992	Commonwealth v. Snodgrass· Dissent†	831 S.W.2d 176	56
1990	Ingram v. Commonwealth	801 S.W.2d 321	55

Showing the 15 most-cited of 351 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 Kentucky reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Dan Jack Combs on?: Dan Jack Combs was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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