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 1965 / Served to 1978

James A. Finch Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Missouri

James A. Finch Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1907–1988
Tenure: 1965–1978 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	Supreme Court of Missouri	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Finch authored 273 published opinions for the court (1965–1983), plus 45 dissents and 65 concurrences. Most cited: Thummel v. King (859 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. 201 of these were attributed to Finch 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
1978	Thummel v. King	570 S.W.2d 679	859
1972	State v. Degraffenreid· Concurrence†	477 S.W.2d 57	243
1973	J. E. Hathman, Inc. v. Sigma Alpha Epsilon Club of Columbia	491 S.W.2d 261	222
1968	Crosswhite v. State	426 S.W.2d 67	216
1969	Kennedy v. Dixon	439 S.W.2d 173	185
1974	Smith v. State· Dissent†	513 S.W.2d 407	175
1967	Brown v. St. Louis Public Service Company	421 S.W.2d 255	136
1975	State v. Baker	524 S.W.2d 122	127
1978	Crowder v. Vandendeale	564 S.W.2d 879	126
1972	Foremost-McKesson, Inc. v. Davis· Concurrence†	488 S.W.2d 193	123
1974	State v. Anderson	515 S.W.2d 534	102
1978	Sampson v. Missouri Pacific Railroad· Dissent†	560 S.W.2d 573	101
1977	Means v. Sears, Roebuck & Co.· Concurrence†	550 S.W.2d 780	99
1977	Jepson v. Stubbs	555 S.W.2d 307	98
1976	Cameron Mutual Insurance Co. v. Madden	533 S.W.2d 538	86

Showing the 15 most-cited of 383 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 A. Finch Jr. on?: James A. Finch Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri.

Sources

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

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13 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).