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

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

Supreme Court of Missouri / Joined 1991 / Served to 1995

Elwood L. Thomas

Justice, Supreme Court of Missouri

Elwood L. Thomas was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri, who joined the court in 1991. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1930 · age 96
Tenure: 1991–1995 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Supreme Court of Missouri	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Thomas authored 53 published opinions for the court (1991–1995), plus 5 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Grim (551 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. 28 of these were attributed to Thomas 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
1993	State v. Grim	854 S.W.2d 403	551
1993	Callahan v. Cardinal Glennon Hospital	863 S.W.2d 852	335
1993	State v. Bernard· Concurrence†	849 S.W.2d 10	262
1995	State v. Silvey	894 S.W.2d 662	224
1992	State v. Sladek· Concurrence†	835 S.W.2d 308	206
1991	Blaske v. Smith & Entzeroth, Inc.	821 S.W.2d 822	105
1992	Halpin v. American Family Mutual Insurance Co.· Concurrence†	823 S.W.2d 479	99
1994	Tune v. Synergy Gas Corp.	883 S.W.2d 10	90
1995	State v. Miller	894 S.W.2d 649	74
1992	High Life Sales Co. v. Brown-Forman Corp.	823 S.W.2d 493	71
1994	State v. Nolan	872 S.W.2d 99	67
1992	Thompson Ex Rel. Thompson v. Crawford	833 S.W.2d 868	67
1994	Reuscher v. State· Dissent†	887 S.W.2d 588	66
1993	Herndon v. Tuhey	857 S.W.2d 203	66
1993	Brandt v. Medical Defense Associates	856 S.W.2d 667	65

Showing the 15 most-cited of 66 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 Missouri reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Elwood L. Thomas on?: Elwood L. Thomas was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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