How do judges of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia / Joined 1933 / Served to 1950

Jo N. Kenna

Justice, Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia

Jo N. Kenna was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, who joined the court in 1933. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1888–1950
Tenure: 1933–1950 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1933	Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia	–	–

Education

Mount St Mary's College
University of Virginia-Main Campus

Judicial Record

In our data, Kenna authored 426 published opinions for the court (1933–1950), plus 88 dissents and 53 concurrences. Most cited: State Ex Rel. Adkins v. Sims (909 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. 4 of these were attributed to Kenna 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
1947	State Ex Rel. Adkins v. Sims· Concurrence	46 S.E.2d 81	909
1946	Harbert v. County Court of Harrison County· Dissent	39 S.E.2d 177	113
1939	Webb v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co.· Concurrence	2 S.E.2d 898	92
1946	State v. Hudson· Concurrence	37 S.E.2d 553	80
1947	State Ex Rel. Cashman v. Sims· Dissent	43 S.E.2d 805	71
1946	State v. Wooldridge· Dissent	40 S.E.2d 899	66
1944	Stone v. Rudolph· Dissent	32 S.E.2d 742	65
1948	French v. Sinkford· Dissent	54 S.E.2d 38	61
1947	West Virginia - Pittsburgh Coal Co. v. Strong	42 S.E.2d 46	59
1943	Sims v. Fisher· Concurrence	25 S.E.2d 216	52
1937	Hardy v. Simpson· Concurrence	190 S.E. 680	51
1936	Rasmus v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board	184 S.E. 250	38
1934	Berry v. Fox· Concurrence	172 S.E. 896	38
1949	Somerville v. Dellosa	56 S.E.2d 756	37
1947	Tawney v. Kirkhart	44 S.E.2d 634	37

Showing the 15 most-cited of 567 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 Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Jo N. Kenna on?: Jo N. Kenna was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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