How do judges of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia / Joined 1994 / Served to 1996

Franklin Cleckley

Justice, Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia

Franklin Cleckley was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, who joined the court in 1994. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1940 · age 86
Tenure: 1994–1996 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1994	Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia	–	–

Education

Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Cleckley authored 113 published opinions for the court (1994–1997), plus 4 dissents and 25 concurrences. Most cited: In Interest of Tiffany Marie S. (2,363 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. 35 of these were attributed to Cleckley 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
1996	In Interest of Tiffany Marie S.	470 S.E.2d 177	2,363
1994	Painter v. Peavy	451 S.E.2d 755	1,341
1995	State v. Guthrie	461 S.E.2d 163	1,064
1995	State v. Miller	459 S.E.2d 114	981
1996	State v. LaRock	470 S.E.2d 613	772
1995	State Ex Rel. McGraw v. Scott Runyan Pontiac-Buick, Inc.	461 S.E.2d 516	585
1995	Williams v. Precision Coil, Inc.	459 S.E.2d 329	565
1997	State Ex Rel. Hoover v. Berger	483 S.E.2d 12	530
1995	Appalachian Power Co. v. State Tax Department	466 S.E.2d 424	442
1995	In Re Christina L.	460 S.E.2d 692	354
1995	Tennant v. Marion Health Care Foundation, Inc.	459 S.E.2d 374	308
1996	In Re Queen	473 S.E.2d 483	300
1994	State v. McGinnis	455 S.E.2d 516	257
1994	State v. Derr	451 S.E.2d 731	250
1995	Martin v. Randolph County Board of Education	465 S.E.2d 399	244

Showing the 15 most-cited of 142 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 Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Franklin Cleckley on?: Franklin Cleckley was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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1 year on the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).