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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Kentucky / Joined 1993 / Served to 2004

Janet Stumbo

Justice, Supreme Court of Kentucky

Janet Stumbo was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, who joined the court in 1993. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1954 · age 72
Tenure: 1993–2004 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1993	Supreme Court of Kentucky	–	–

Education

Morehead State University
University of Kentucky

Judicial Record

In our data, Stumbo authored 99 published opinions for the court (1994–2004), plus 96 dissents and 19 concurrences. Most cited: Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. v. Thompson (491 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. 165 of these were attributed to Stumbo 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
2000	Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. v. Thompson· Concurrence†	11 S.W.3d 575	491
1998	Tamme v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	973 S.W.2d 13	202
2003	Pathways, Inc. v. Hammons· Dissent†	113 S.W.3d 85	200
1997	Commonwealth v. Burge· Dissent†	947 S.W.2d 805	200
1999	Springer v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	998 S.W.2d 439	185
1997	Stringer v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	956 S.W.2d 883	148
1996	Partin v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	918 S.W.2d 219	139
1998	Adcock v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	967 S.W.2d 6	121
1994	Beckham v. Bd. of Educ. of Jefferson Cty.· Concurrence†	873 S.W.2d 575	117
2003	Phelps v. Louisville Water Co.	103 S.W.3d 46	107
1998	Houston v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	975 S.W.2d 925	105
1999	Taylor v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	995 S.W.2d 355	104
1994	Bussell v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	882 S.W.2d 111	95
1998	Talbott v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	968 S.W.2d 76	94
2002	Woodall v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	63 S.W.3d 104	82

Showing the 15 most-cited of 214 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 Kentucky reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Janet Stumbo on?: Janet Stumbo was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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