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

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

Supreme Court of Indiana / Joined 1899 / Served to 1902

Francis Elisha Baker

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Francis Elisha Baker was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana, who joined the court in 1899. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1860–1924
Tenure: 1899–1902 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1899	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Baker authored 117 published opinions for the court (1899–1902), plus 4 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Davis Coal Co. v. Polland (104 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. 125 of these were attributed to Baker 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
1902	Davis Coal Co. v. Polland†	158 Ind. 607	104
1900	Board of Commissioners v. Conner· Concurrence†	155 Ind. 484	56
1900	Adams v. City of Shelbyville· Dissent†	154 Ind. 467	56
1901	Indianapolis Union Railway Co. v. Houlihan†	157 Ind. 494	53
1899	Thrawley v. State†	153 Ind. 375	43
1901	In re Denny†	156 Ind. 104	38
1900	Campbell v. City of Indianapolis· Concurrence†	155 Ind. 186	35
1899	Manlove v. State†	153 Ind. 80	34
1901	Island Coal Co. v. Swaggerty†	159 Ind. 664	30
1900	Green v. State†	154 Ind. 655	30
1901	Koepke v. Hill†	157 Ind. 172	29
1901	Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Ferguson†	157 Ind. 64	28
1900	Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway Co. v. Parker†	154 Ind. 153	27
1899	Sauntman v. Maxwell†	154 Ind. 114	27
1902	Payne v. Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railway Co.†	157 Ind. 616	24

Showing the 15 most-cited of 125 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 Indiana reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Francis Elisha Baker on?: Francis Elisha Baker was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana.

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 Indiana. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).