How do judges of the Supreme Court of South Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is legislative election.

Supreme Court of South Carolina / Joined 1988 / Former Justice

Jean H. Toal

Justice, Supreme Court of South Carolina

Jean H. Toal was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, who joined the court in 1988. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1943 · age 83
Tenure: 1988 · 38 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1988	Supreme Court of South Carolina	–	–

Education

Agnes Scott College

Judicial Record

In our data, Toal authored 1,232 published opinions for the court (1988–2017), plus 127 dissents and 50 concurrences. Most cited: Wilder Corp. v. Wilke (665 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. 836 of these were attributed to Toal 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
1998	Wilder Corp. v. Wilke	497 S.E.2d 731	665
2011	Lewis v. Lewis· Concurrence†	709 S.E.2d 650	543
2000	Hodges v. Rainey	533 S.E.2d 578	371
1991	State v. Torrence· Concurrence†	406 S.E.2d 315	352
2002	Fleming v. Rose†	567 S.E.2d 857	246
1989	Cherry v. State	386 S.E.2d 624	215
2007	State v. Pittman†	647 S.E.2d 144	186
2000	Shealy v. Aiken County	535 S.E.2d 438	181
1989	State v. Bailey	377 S.E.2d 581	177
2003	Sauner v. Public Service Authority†	581 S.E.2d 161	167
2001	Zabinski v. Bright Acres Associates	553 S.E.2d 110	164
2009	Hancock v. Mid-South Management Co., Inc.†	673 S.E.2d 801	163
2012	Atlantic Coast Builders & Contractors, LLC v. Lewis†	398 S.C. 323	154
2001	Curtis v. State	549 S.E.2d 591	152
2014	Aiken v. Byars· Dissent†	410 S.C. 534	148

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,411 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 South Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is legislative election.
Which court was Jean H. Toal on?: Jean H. Toal was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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