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

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

Supreme Court of Oklahoma / Joined 2000 / Active

James Winchester

Justice, Supreme Court of Oklahoma

James Winchester is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, serving since 2000. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1953 · age 73
Tenure: Since 2000 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	Supreme Court of Oklahoma	–	–

Education

University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus
Oklahoma City University

Judicial Record

In our data, Winchester authored 149 published opinions for the court (2000–2019), plus 46 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: Daniels v. State (506 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. 131 of these were attributed to Winchester 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
2010	Daniels v. State†	243 P.3d 21	506
2005	Badillo v. Mid Century Insurance Co.· Dissent†	2005 OK 48	198
2013	Starkey v. Oklahoma Department of Corrections· Dissent†	305 P.3d 1004	125
2007	In Re Amendment to the Rules Governing Disciplinary Proceedings Rule 7, 5 O.S.2001, Ch. 1, App.1	2007 OK 1	119
2002	Oklahoma Public Employees Ass'n v. Oklahoma Department of Central Services· Concurrence†	2002 OK 71	90
2003	Merritt v. Merritt	2003 OK 68	79
2005	Parret v. UNICCO Service Co.· Concurrence†	2005 OK 54	78
2006	State ex rel. Oklahoma State Department of Health v. Robertson†	152 P.3d 875	75
2013	Douglas v. Cox Retirement Properties, Inc.· Dissent†	302 P.3d 789	74
2001	Fent v. Oklahoma Natural Gas Co.	2001 OK 35	68
2014	STATE ex rel. OKLAHOMA BAR ASSOCIATION v. BERNHARDT†	323 P.3d 222	67
2000	Newport v. USAA· Concurrence†	2000 OK 59	66
2013	Scott v. Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Ass'n· Dissent†	313 P.3d 891	62
2001	Sudbury v. Deterding	2001 OK 10	56
2002	Redcorn v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co.	2002 OK 15	55

Showing the 15 most-cited of 210 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 Oklahoma reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is James Winchester on?: James Winchester is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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