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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Georgia / Joined 1981 / Served to 1991

George T. Smith

Justice, Supreme Court of Georgia

George T. Smith was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1916–2010
Tenure: 1981–1991 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	Supreme Court of Georgia	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 494 published opinions for the court (1981–1991), plus 146 dissents and 20 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Thornton (372 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. 314 of these were attributed to Smith 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
1984	State v. Thornton· Dissent†	322 S.E.2d 711	372
1983	Williams v. State· Dissent†	251 Ga. 749	257
1991	Scruggs v. Georgia Department of Human Resources	408 S.E.2d 103	208
1984	State v. Stephens· Dissent†	311 S.E.2d 823	206
1982	Momon v. State· Dissent†	294 S.E.2d 482	197
1985	Cuzzort v. State· Dissent†	334 S.E.2d 661	181
1981	Hollowell v. Jove	279 S.E.2d 430	168
1982	Blackburn v. Blackburn· Dissent†	292 S.E.2d 821	162
1982	Patterson v. State	287 S.E.2d 7	155
1987	Hicks v. State	352 S.E.2d 762	154
1991	Yarbray v. Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Co.· Dissent†	409 S.E.2d 835	143
1989	Fleming v. Zant· Dissent†	386 S.E.2d 339	141
1987	Frazier v. State	362 S.E.2d 351	124
1982	Stanley v. State· Dissent†	295 S.E.2d 315	118
1982	Walraven v. State	297 S.E.2d 278	115

Showing the 15 most-cited of 660 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 Georgia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was George T. Smith on?: George T. Smith was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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