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

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

Supreme Court of Missouri / Joined 1970 / Served to 1982

John E. Bardgett

Justice, Supreme Court of Missouri

John E. Bardgett was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri, who joined the court in 1970. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1927 · age 99
Tenure: 1970–1982 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1970	Supreme Court of Missouri	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Bardgett authored 188 published opinions for the court (1970–1982), plus 95 dissents and 61 concurrences. Most cited: Oates v. Safeco Insurance Co. of America (247 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. 228 of these were attributed to Bardgett 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
1979	Oates v. Safeco Insurance Co. of America	583 S.W.2d 713	247
1972	State v. Degraffenreid	477 S.W.2d 57	243
1979	Seales v. State	580 S.W.2d 733	230
1981	State v. Turner· Dissent†	623 S.W.2d 4	198
1976	State v. Franco· Dissent†	544 S.W.2d 533	188
1981	State v. Mercer· Concurrence†	618 S.W.2d 1	151
1980	Harrison v. MFA Mutual Insurance Co.· Dissent†	607 S.W.2d 137	149
1982	State v. Blair	638 S.W.2d 739	146
1982	State Ex Rel. Williams v. Marsh· Concurrence†	626 S.W.2d 223	136
1981	State v. Royal· Dissent†	610 S.W.2d 946	131
1975	State v. Baker· Concurrence†	524 S.W.2d 122	127
1982	State v. Olson	636 S.W.2d 318	123
1977	State v. Duren· Concurrence†	556 S.W.2d 11	107
1975	Spradling v. Deimeke	528 S.W.2d 759	107
1981	State v. McCrary· Dissent†	621 S.W.2d 266	104

Showing the 15 most-cited of 344 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 Missouri reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was John E. Bardgett on?: John E. Bardgett was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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