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

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

Supreme Court of Oklahoma / Joined 1985 / Served to 2003

Hardy Summers

Justice, Supreme Court of Oklahoma

Hardy Summers was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1933–2012
Tenure: 1985–2003 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	Supreme Court of Oklahoma	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Summers authored 298 published opinions for the court (1985–2003), plus 48 dissents and 71 concurrences. Most cited: Patel v. OMH Medical Center, Inc. (269 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. 164 of these were attributed to Summers 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
1999	Patel v. OMH Medical Center, Inc.· Concurrence†	1999 OK 33	269
2003	Christian v. Gray	2003 OK 10	250
1991	Buzzard v. Farmers Ins. Co., Inc.	824 P.2d 1105	168
2001	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Bolusky	2001 OK 26	163
1999	Nealis v. Baird· Concurrence†	1999 OK 98	130
1990	Wofford v. Eastern State Hospital	795 P.2d 516	129
1997	Lockhart v. Loosen· Concurrence†	1997 OK 103	119
1990	Hargrave v. Canadian Valley Electric Cooperative, Inc.	792 P.2d 50	117
1985	Oral Roberts University v. Oklahoma Tax Commission	714 P.2d 1013	116
1997	Brown v. Nicholson· Concurrence†	935 P.2d 319	114
1993	Graham v. Keuchel· Concurrence†	847 P.2d 342	113
1989	St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance Co. v. Getty Oil Co.	782 P.2d 915	111
1993	Ethics Commission v. Cullison	850 P.2d 1069	110
1990	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Armstrong	791 P.2d 815	110
1989	Bane v. Anderson, Bryant & Co.	786 P.2d 1230	101

Showing the 15 most-cited of 421 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 Oklahoma reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Hardy Summers on?: Hardy Summers was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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