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 1817 / Served to 1853

Isaac Newton Blackford

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Isaac Newton Blackford was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana (5 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1817. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1786–1859
Tenure: 1817–1853 · 35 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1817	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Blackford authored 812 published opinions for the court (1817–1852). Most cited: Hamilton v. State ex rel. Bates (58 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. 812 of these were attributed to Blackford 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
1852	Hamilton v. State ex rel. Bates†	3 Ind. 452	58
1837	Coffin v. Anderson†	4 Blackf. 395	53
1831	Howell v. Wilson†	2 Blackf. 418	41
1851	President of Mount Vernon v. Dusouchett†	2 Ind. 586	30
1841	Walker v. State ex rel. Corbin†	6 Blackf. 1	30
1840	Drummond v. Leslie†	5 Blackf. 453	30
1830	Frakes v. Brown†	2 Blackf. 295	30
1835	M'Gregg v. State†	4 Blackf. 101	29
1823	Findley v. Cooley†	1 Blackf. 262	29
1839	Doe v. Reagan†	5 Blackf. 217	28
1827	Barlow v. State†	2 Blackf. 114	28
1829	Elliott v. Armstrong†	2 Blackf. 198	26
1845	Sparks v. State Bank†	7 Blackf. 469	25
1821	Fite v. Doe†	1 Blackf. 127	25
1841	Barickman v. Kuykendall†	6 Blackf. 21	24

Showing the 15 most-cited of 812 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 Isaac Newton Blackford on?: Isaac Newton Blackford was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana.

Sources

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

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35 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).