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 1964 / Served to 1978

Fred L. Henley

Justice, Supreme Court of Missouri

Fred L. Henley was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri, who joined the court in 1964. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1911 · age 115
Tenure: 1964–1978 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1964	Supreme Court of Missouri	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Henley authored 217 published opinions for the court (1964–1979), plus 25 dissents and 10 concurrences. Most cited: Scheibel v. Hillis (148 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. 123 of these were attributed to Henley 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
1976	Scheibel v. Hillis· Dissent†	531 S.W.2d 285	148
1975	State v. Baker· Concurrence†	524 S.W.2d 122	127
1974	State v. Anderson· Dissent†	515 S.W.2d 534	102
1978	Sampson v. Missouri Pacific Railroad· Dissent†	560 S.W.2d 573	101
1968	Laughlin v. Forgrave	432 S.W.2d 308	96
1967	State v. Meiers	412 S.W.2d 478	91
1970	State v. Stuart	456 S.W.2d 19	82
1969	Abernathy v. Sisters of St. Mary's	446 S.W.2d 599	74
1976	Americans United v. Rogers· Dissent†	538 S.W.2d 711	64
1972	Flood v. State	476 S.W.2d 529	64
1968	Elliott v. Harris	423 S.W.2d 831	63
1976	Kilbane v. Director of the Department of Revenue· Dissent†	544 S.W.2d 9	59
1968	State v. Harris	425 S.W.2d 148	58
1977	State v. Brown· Dissent†	547 S.W.2d 797	56
1974	Spires v. Edgar· Dissent†	513 S.W.2d 372	52

Showing the 15 most-cited of 252 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 Fred L. Henley on?: Fred L. Henley 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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14 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).