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

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

Supreme Court of Missouri / Joined 1937 / Served to 1949

James Marsh Douglas

Justice, Supreme Court of Missouri

James Marsh Douglas was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri, who joined the court in 1937. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1896–1974
Tenure: 1937–1949 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1937	Supreme Court of Missouri	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Douglas authored 201 published opinions for the court (1937–1949), plus 3 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: City of St. Louis v. Butler Co. (112 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. 3 of these were attributed to Douglas 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
1949	City of St. Louis v. Butler Co.· Concurrence	219 S.W.2d 372	112
1945	Sutter v. Easterly	189 S.W.2d 284	96
1941	Brown v. Weare	152 S.W.2d 649	87
1949	Tietjens v. City of St. Louis	222 S.W.2d 70	68
1943	Wentz v. Price Candy Co.	175 S.W.2d 852	61
1946	Weller v. Hayes Truck Lines	197 S.W.2d 657	60
1949	State Ex Rel. Rice v. Public Service Commission	220 S.W.2d 61	58
1942	State Ex Rel. McGaughey v. Grayston	163 S.W.2d 335	58
1949	Beckmann v. Beckmann	218 S.W.2d 566	56
1942	Harfst v. Hoegen	163 S.W.2d 609	54
1948	Blaser v. Coleman	213 S.W.2d 420	51
1947	King v. Priest· Concurrence	206 S.W.2d 547	49
1949	State Ex Rel. Police Retirement System v. Murphy	224 S.W.2d 68	47
1947	Hamilton v. Linn	200 S.W.2d 69	47
1943	Orr v. Shell Oil Co.	177 S.W.2d 608	45

Showing the 15 most-cited of 209 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 Missouri reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was James Marsh Douglas on?: James Marsh Douglas was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri.

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.

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