How do judges of the Kentucky Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Kentucky Court of Appeals / Joined 1976 / Served to 1996

James William Howerton

Judge, Kentucky Court of Appeals

James William Howerton was a Judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1931 · age 95
Tenure: 1976–1996 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Kentucky Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Howerton authored 331 published opinions for the court (1977–1996), plus 7 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Maupin v. Stansbury (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. 258 of these were attributed to Howerton 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	Maupin v. Stansbury	575 S.W.2d 695	58
1992	Skilcraft Sheetmetal, Inc. v. Kentucky MacHinery, Inc.	836 S.W.2d 907	47
1986	Sparks v. Commonwealth	721 S.W.2d 726	47
1991	Ward v. Housman· Dissent†	809 S.W.2d 717	45
1979	Lexington Theological Seminary, Inc. v. Vance	596 S.W.2d 11	38
1994	Transport Insurance Co. v. Ford†	886 S.W.2d 901	37
1992	Williams v. Commonwealth†	829 S.W.2d 942	33
1986	Personnel Board v. Heck	725 S.W.2d 13	33
1985	Bartelt Aviation, Inc. v. Dry Lake Coal Co.	682 S.W.2d 796	32
1990	Commonwealth Transportation Cabinet Department of Vehicle Regulation v. Cornell	796 S.W.2d 591	27
1988	Farmer v. City of Newport†	748 S.W.2d 162	27
1991	Perry v. Central Bank & Trust Co.†	812 S.W.2d 166	26
1989	Commonwealth v. Martin	777 S.W.2d 236	25
1996	Miller v. Miller†	929 S.W.2d 202	24
1996	Daniels v. Louisville Gas & Electric Co.	933 S.W.2d 821	24

Showing the 15 most-cited of 345 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 Kentucky Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was James William Howerton on?: James William Howerton was a Judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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