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

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

Supreme Court of Oklahoma / Joined 1972 / Served to 1985

Don Barnes

Justice, Supreme Court of Oklahoma

Don Barnes was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1924–2011
Tenure: 1972–1985 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Supreme Court of Oklahoma	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Barnes authored 267 published opinions for the court (1972–1984), plus 21 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: McCorkle v. Great Atlantic Insurance Co. (176 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. 92 of these were attributed to Barnes 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
1981	McCorkle v. Great Atlantic Insurance Co.	637 P.2d 583	176
1984	Darnell v. Chrysler Corp.	687 P.2d 132	110
1976	AMF Tubescope Company v. Hatchel	547 P.2d 374	108
1974	Wiley v. Travelers Insurance Company· Dissent†	534 P.2d 1293	100
1983	Carpenter v. Carpenter· Dissent†	657 P.2d 646	92
1977	Bd. of Regents, Etc. v. Natl. Collegiate Athletic Ass'n· Dissent†	561 P.2d 499	83
1979	Scott v. Bradford· Concurrence†	606 P.2d 554	79
1983	Shepard v. Farmers Ins. Co., Inc.	678 P.2d 250	70
1982	Union Texas Petroleum, a Division of Allied Chemical Corp. v. Corporation Commission· Dissent†	651 P.2d 652	66
1980	Amoco Production Co. v. Lindley	609 P.2d 733	62
1979	Mac Adjustment, Inc. v. Property Loss Research Bureau	595 P.2d 427	59
1982	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Lowe	640 P.2d 1361	58
1979	Matter of Rich· Concurrence†	604 P.2d 1248	58
1979	Stewart v. Amerada Hess Corp.· Dissent†	604 P.2d 854	57
1973	Karriman v. Orthopedic Clinic	516 P.2d 534	56

Showing the 15 most-cited of 295 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 Oklahoma reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Don Barnes on?: Don Barnes was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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