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 1985 / Served to 2000

Ernest A. Finney Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of South Carolina

Ernest A. Finney Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1931 · age 95
Tenure: 1985–2000 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	Supreme Court of South Carolina	–	–

Education

Claflin University
South Carolina State University

Judicial Record

In our data, Finney authored 426 published opinions for the court (1985–2000), plus 86 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Torrence (352 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. 286 of these were attributed to Finney 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
1991	State v. Torrence	406 S.E.2d 315	352
1994	First Savings Bank v. McLean	444 S.E.2d 513	206
2000	Al-Shabazz v. State· Concurrence†	527 S.E.2d 742	168
1991	Noisette v. Ismail	403 S.E.2d 122	164
1999	State v. Council· Dissent†	515 S.E.2d 508	157
1993	Whiteside v. Cherokee County School District No. One†	311 S.C. 335	149
1993	State v. Schumpert· Dissent†	435 S.E.2d 859	136
1996	State v. Adams· Concurrence†	470 S.E.2d 366	113
1992	Hitachi Data Systems Corp. v. Leatherman	420 S.E.2d 843	100
1997	Whitner v. State· Dissent†	492 S.E.2d 777	99
1989	Player v. Chandler	382 S.E.2d 891	95
1990	State v. Green· Dissent†	392 S.E.2d 157	89
1996	State v. Von Dohlen· Dissent†	471 S.E.2d 689	85
1991	Cafe Associates, Ltd. v. Gerngross	406 S.E.2d 162	84
1994	Strange v. S.C. Department of Highways & Public Transportation†	314 S.C. 427	83

Showing the 15 most-cited of 524 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 Ernest A. Finney Jr. on?: Ernest A. Finney Jr. 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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15 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).