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 1933 / Served to 1939

James Hughes

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

James Hughes was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana, who joined the court in 1933. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1933–1939 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1933	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Education

DePauw University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hughes authored 192 published opinions for the court (1932–1938), plus 1 dissent and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Hicks v. State (70 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1937	Hicks v. State	11 N.E.2d 171	70
1938	Osbon v. State	13 N.E.2d 223	61
1936	Albert v. Milk Control Board of Indiana	200 N.E. 688	56
1938	Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. v. Alterovitz	14 N.E.2d 570	53
1935	Lutz, Atty.-Gen. v. Arnold, Atty. Tr.	193 N.E. 840	41
1933	Anderson v. State	186 N.E. 316	40
1936	State v. Hamer	199 N.E. 589	39
1935	Ule v. State	194 N.E. 140	39
1935	Grand Union Tea Company v. Walker	195 N.E. 277	31
1934	Bolivar Twp. Bd. of Fin. of Benton Co. v. Hawkins	191 N.E. 158	30
1935	Peden v. Board of Review of Cass County	195 N.E. 87	29
1933	Wysong v. Automobile Underwriters, Inc.	184 N.E. 783	29
1938	Sweigart v. State	12 N.E.2d 134	27
1933	Brown v. Brown	187 N.E. 836	27
1933	Boden v. Del-Mar Garage, Inc.	185 N.E. 860	25

Showing the 15 most-cited of 194 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 James Hughes on?: James Hughes was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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6 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).