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

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

Supreme Court of Indiana / Joined 1917 / Served to 1923

Howard L. Townsend

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Howard L. Townsend was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana (5 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1917. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1869–1950
Tenure: 1917–1923 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1917	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Education

Bethany College

Judicial Record

In our data, Townsend authored 81 published opinions for the court (1918–1923), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Martin v. Lilly (66 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. 81 of these were attributed to Townsend 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
1919	Martin v. Lilly†	188 Ind. 139	66
1919	Dunville v. State†	188 Ind. 373	41
1918	Schmitt v. F. W. Cook Brewing Co.†	187 Ind. 623	39
1923	Fox v. City of Bicknell†	193 Ind. 537	34
1918	State v. Wiggam†	187 Ind. 159	27
1921	Wrassman v. State†	191 Ind. 399	26
1920	Robbins v. Fugit†	189 Ind. 165	25
1919	Solimeto v. State†	188 Ind. 170	22
1922	Emry v. Beaver†	192 Ind. 471	20
1919	Mishler v. Chicago, South Bend & Northern Indiana Railroad†	188 Ind. 189	20
1923	Crampton v. O'Mara†	193 Ind. 551	19
1921	Gray v. McLaughlin†	191 Ind. 190	19
1918	Roth v. Vandalia Railroad†	187 Ind. 302	18
1922	Star Publishing Company v. Ball	192 Ind. 158	17
1922	Mitchell v. Beissenherz†	192 Ind. 587	16

Showing the 15 most-cited of 82 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 Indiana reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Howard L. Townsend on?: Howard L. Townsend was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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