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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Ohio / Joined 1993 / Served to 2004

Francis Edward Sweeney Sr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Ohio

Francis Edward Sweeney Sr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio (6 judges, selected by partisan election), who joined the court in 1993. He previously served on the Ohio Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1934–2011
Tenure: 1993–2004 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1988	Ohio Court of Appeals	–	–
1993	Supreme Court of Ohio	–	–

Education

Xavier University

Judicial Record

In our data, Sweeney authored 321 published opinions for the court (1989–2004), plus 29 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Zivich v. Mentor Soccer Club, Inc. (1,213 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. 193 of these were attributed to Sweeney 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
1998	Zivich v. Mentor Soccer Club, Inc.†	82 Ohio St. 3d 367	1,213
2003	Armstrong v. Best Buy Co.†	99 Ohio St. 3d 79	1,165
2003	Westfield Insurance v. Galatis· Dissent†	100 Ohio St. 3d 216	1,062
2003	State v. Comer†	99 Ohio St. 3d 463	1,040
1997	State v. Robinette· Dissent†	80 Ohio St. 3d 234	619
1997	In re Hayes†	79 Ohio St. 3d 46	613
2000	State v. Homan†	89 Ohio St. 3d 421	535
2001	State v. Jones†	91 Ohio St. 3d 335	492
1999	City of Maumee v. Weisner· Dissent†	1999 Ohio 68	485
1996	Nakoff v. Fairview General Hospital†	75 Ohio St. 3d 254	482
1996	Kay v. Marc Glassman, Inc.†	76 Ohio St. 3d 18	452
1999	State v. Fears†	86 Ohio St. 3d 329	417
2002	Kostelnik v. Helper· Concurrence†	96 Ohio St. 3d 1	409
2002	Stark County Bar Ass'n v. Buttacavoli†	96 Ohio St. 3d 424	387
2002	Stark Cty. Bar Assn. v. Buttacavoli	2002 Ohio 4743	385

Showing the 15 most-cited of 356 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 Ohio reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Francis Edward Sweeney Sr. on?: Francis Edward Sweeney Sr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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