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 1980 / Served to 1981

David Dudley Dowd Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Ohio

David Dudley Dowd Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1929 · age 97
Tenure: 1980–1981
Education: The College of Wooster 1951

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Supreme Court of Ohio	–	–

Education

The College of Wooster

B.A.

1951

Judicial Record

In our data, Dowd authored 7 published opinions for the court (1980), plus 3 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Ohio v. Wilkins (362 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. 11 of these were attributed to Dowd 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
1980	Ohio v. Wilkins· Dissent†	64 Ohio St. 2d 382	362
1980	Colley v. Bazell†	64 Ohio St. 2d 243	360
1980	State v. Pachay†	64 Ohio St. 2d 218	301
1980	Ohio v. Wilkinson· Concurrence†	64 Ohio St. 2d 308	142
1980	City of Kettering v. Hollen†	64 Ohio St. 2d 232	139
1980	Davis v. State Personnel Bd. of Review†	64 Ohio St. 2d 102	35
1980	State ex rel. Hammond v. Industrial Commission†	64 Ohio St. 2d 237	17
1980	Novak v. Perk· Dissent†	64 Ohio St. 2d 43	13
1980	State v. Parra†	61 Ohio St. 2d 236	10
1980	State ex rel. Carter v. Celebrezze· Dissent†	63 Ohio St. 2d 326	1
1980	Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. v. City of Lakewood†	64 Ohio St. 2d 374	0

Showing the 11 most-cited of 11 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 David Dudley Dowd Jr. on?: David Dudley Dowd Jr. 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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Joined the court in 1980. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).