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

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

Kansas Supreme Court / Joined 1956 / Served to 1977

Harold R. Fatzer

Justice, Kansas Supreme Court

Harold R. Fatzer was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1956. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1910–1989
Tenure: 1956–1977 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1956	Kansas Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Washburn University

Judicial Record

In our data, Fatzer authored 585 published opinions for the court (1956–1977), plus 56 dissents and 31 concurrences. Most cited: Manzanares v. Bell (150 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. 166 of these were attributed to Fatzer 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
1974	Manzanares v. Bell	522 P.2d 1291	150
1976	Brown v. Wichita State University· Concurrence†	547 P.2d 1015	138
1957	State Ex Rel. Anderson v. Fadely	308 P.2d 537	112
1976	State v. Faulkner	551 P.2d 1247	103
1977	Lightcap v. Mobil Oil Corporation· Concurrence†	562 P.2d 1	96
1963	Harris v. Shanahan	387 P.2d 771	92
1975	Brown v. Wichita State University	540 P.2d 66	90
1962	State v. Hill	369 P.2d 365	89
1965	Tri-State Hotel Co. v. Londerholm	408 P.2d 864	82
1959	Crabb v. Swindler, Administratrix	337 P.2d 986	80
1977	State v. Fisher	563 P.2d 1012	79
1962	Hoffman v. Dautel	368 P.2d 57	74
1968	Woodring v. Hall	438 P.2d 135	73
1968	Mobil Oil Corporation v. McHenry· Dissent†	436 P.2d 982	73
1972	Thompson v. Amis	493 P.2d 1259	72

Showing the 15 most-cited of 672 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 Kansas Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Harold R. Fatzer on?: Harold R. Fatzer was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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