How do judges of the Supreme Court of South Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is legislative election.

Supreme Court of South Carolina / Joined 1962 / Served to 1974

James M. Brailsford

Justice, Supreme Court of South Carolina

James M. Brailsford was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, who joined the court in 1962. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1910 · age 116
Tenure: 1962–1974 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1962	Supreme Court of South Carolina	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Brailsford authored 352 published opinions for the court (1950–1975), plus 25 dissents and 19 concurrences. Most cited: Mickle v. Blackmon (101 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. 150 of these were attributed to Brailsford 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
1969	Mickle v. Blackmon	166 S.E.2d 173	101
1964	Laird v. Nationwide Insurance· Dissent†	134 S.E.2d 206	96
1964	Fowler v. Woodward	138 S.E.2d 42	85
1971	State v. Key· Dissent†	180 S.E.2d 888	53
1965	Hicks v. Herring	144 S.E.2d 151	49
1962	Horton Ex Rel. Estate of Scott v. Greyhound Corp.	128 S.E.2d 776	46
1974	Darden v. Witham· Dissent†	209 S.E.2d 42	43
1971	Chavis v. Watkins	180 S.E.2d 648	39
1964	North River Insurance v. Gibson	137 S.E.2d 264	37
1970	Tharpe v. G. E. Moore Co.	174 S.E.2d 397	35
1963	Atlantic Coast Line Railroad v. Whetstone· Dissent†	132 S.E.2d 172	35
1967	Hughey v. Ausborn· Concurrence†	154 S.E.2d 839	34
1973	State v. Cutter	199 S.E.2d 61	33
1967	Shealy v. Algernon Blair, Inc.	156 S.E.2d 646	30
1973	State v. Tabory· Concurrence†	196 S.E.2d 111	29

Showing the 15 most-cited of 396 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 South Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is legislative election.
Which court was James M. Brailsford on?: James M. Brailsford was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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