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 1973 / Served to 1989

Earl B. Stephenson

Justice, Supreme Court of Kentucky

Earl B. Stephenson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, who joined the court in 1973. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1916–2005
Tenure: 1973–1989 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1973	Supreme Court of Kentucky	–	–

Education

University of Kentucky
University of Kentucky

Judicial Record

In our data, Stephenson authored 112 published opinions for the court (1976–1988), plus 72 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Firestone Textile Co. Division v. Meadows (196 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. 147 of these were attributed to Stephenson 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
1983	Firestone Textile Co. Division v. Meadows· Dissent†	666 S.W.2d 730	196
1984	Craft v. Rice· Dissent†	671 S.W.2d 247	190
1984	Ice v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	667 S.W.2d 671	168
1986	McClellan v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	715 S.W.2d 464	160
1985	Horton v. Union Light, Heat & Power Co.· Dissent†	690 S.W.2d 382	127
1985	Ward v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	695 S.W.2d 404	117
1984	Montgomery Elevator Co. v. McCullough Ex Rel. McCullough· Dissent†	676 S.W.2d 776	116
1979	Brady v. Pettit	586 S.W.2d 29	114
1987	Grayson Fraternal Order of Eagles, Aerie No. 3738, Inc. v. Claywell· Dissent†	736 S.W.2d 328	113
1985	Delta Air Lines, Inc. v. Commonwealth, Revenue Cabinet· Dissent†	689 S.W.2d 14	99
1982	Inman v. Inman· Dissent†	648 S.W.2d 847	97
1981	Kentucky Commission on Human Rights v. Fraser· Dissent†	625 S.W.2d 852	94
1986	Simon v. Continental Insurance Co.· Dissent†	724 S.W.2d 210	91
1979	Ohio Casualty Insurance Co. v. Stanfield· Dissent†	581 S.W.2d 555	82
1988	Marsch v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	743 S.W.2d 830	81

Showing the 15 most-cited of 192 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 Earl B. Stephenson on?: Earl B. Stephenson 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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16 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).