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 1995 / Served to 2003

Deborah L. Cook

Justice, Supreme Court of Ohio

Deborah L. Cook was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio (6 judges, selected by partisan election), who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1952 · age 74
Tenure: 1995–2003 · 8 yrs
Education: University of Akron Main Campus 1974

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Supreme Court of Ohio	–	–

Education

University of Akron Main Campus

B.A.

1974

Judicial Record

In our data, Cook authored 125 published opinions for the court (1995–2003), plus 316 dissents and 146 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Thompkins (16,183 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. 587 of these were attributed to Cook 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
1997	State v. Thompkins· Concurrence†	78 Ohio St. 3d 380	16,183
1996	Dresher v. Burt· Dissent†	75 Ohio St. 3d 280	7,689
2002	State v. Barnes†	94 Ohio St. 3d 21	2,256
1999	State v. Edmonson†	86 Ohio St. 3d 324	1,498
1997	Vahila v. Hall· Concurrence†	77 Ohio St. 3d 421	1,495
1997	Goldfuss v. Davidson· Concurrence†	79 Ohio St. 3d 116	1,335
2001	State v. Treesh†	90 Ohio St. 3d 460	1,260
1998	Zivich v. Mentor Soccer Club, Inc.· Concurrence†	82 Ohio St. 3d 367	1,213
1999	Scott-Pontzer v. Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance· Dissent†	85 Ohio St. 3d 660	871
2002	State v. LaMar†	95 Ohio St. 3d 181	820
2001	State v. Murphy· Concurrence†	91 Ohio St. 3d 516	807
2001	State v. Issa· Concurrence†	93 Ohio St. 3d 49	787
2001	State v. Eppinger· Concurrence†	91 Ohio St. 3d 158	734
2000	Doe v. Shaffer†	2000 Ohio 186	688
1999	State v. Rance†	85 Ohio St. 3d 632	657

Showing the 15 most-cited of 587 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 Deborah L. Cook on?: Deborah L. Cook 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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8 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).