How do judges of the Supreme Court of South Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is legislative election.

Supreme Court of South Carolina / Joined 1995 / Served to 2007

E. C. Burnett III

Justice, Supreme Court of South Carolina

E. C. Burnett III was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1942 · age 84
Tenure: 1995–2007 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Supreme Court of South Carolina	–	–

Education

Wofford College

Judicial Record

In our data, Burnett authored 289 published opinions for the court (1995–2007), plus 28 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: Hodges v. Rainey (371 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. 172 of these were attributed to Burnett 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
2000	Hodges v. Rainey· Concurrence†	533 S.E.2d 578	371
2006	State v. Pagan†	631 S.E.2d 262	319
2006	State v. Baccus†	625 S.E.2d 216	298
2004	Elam v. South Carolina Department of Transportation†	602 S.E.2d 772	287
2001	State v. Saltz	551 S.E.2d 240	162
1999	State v. Council	515 S.E.2d 508	157
2006	Law v. South Carolina Department of Corrections†	629 S.E.2d 642	148
2002	Brown v. South Carolina Department of Health & Environmental Control†	560 S.E.2d 410	135
2001	South Carolina Department of Natural Resources v. Town of McClellanville	550 S.E.2d 299	132
1997	Jackson v. Speed	486 S.E.2d 750	128
1996	Woodall v. Woodall	471 S.E.2d 154	128
2005	Fields v. Regional Medical Center Orangeburg†	609 S.E.2d 506	123
2006	Erickson v. Jones Street Publishers, LLC†	629 S.E.2d 653	118
1998	Strother v. Lexington County Recreation Commission	504 S.E.2d 117	115
2000	Joiner Ex Rel. Rivas v. Rivas	536 S.E.2d 372	112

Showing the 15 most-cited of 334 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 South Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is legislative election.
Which court was E. C. Burnett III on?: E. C. Burnett III was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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