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 1971 / Served to 1972

John E. Carrigan

Justice, Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia

John E. Carrigan was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1910–1984
Tenure: 1971–1972 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Carrigan authored 27 published opinions for the court (1971–1972), plus 4 dissents. Most cited: State v. Smith (125 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. 13 of these were attributed to Carrigan 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
1972	State v. Smith	193 S.E.2d 550	125
1972	McDaniel v. Romano· Dissent†	190 S.E.2d 8	65
1971	State v. Bowman	184 S.E.2d 314	46
1972	Ford v. Coiner	196 S.E.2d 91	43
1971	State v. Hood	184 S.E.2d 334	27
1972	Kelly v. Belcher· Dissent†	187 S.E.2d 617	23
1972	State Ex Rel. Dostert v. Riggleman· Dissent†	187 S.E.2d 591	22
1972	Keiffer v. Queen	189 S.E.2d 842	20
1972	Boury v. Hamm	190 S.E.2d 13	20
1971	State Ex Rel. Bowen v. Flowers· Dissent†	184 S.E.2d 611	19
1971	State Ex Rel. Parsons v. Cuppett	184 S.E.2d 616	16
1972	In Re West	186 S.E.2d 776	15
1972	State Ex Rel. Scott v. Conaty	187 S.E.2d 119	14
1971	State Ex Rel. Burgett v. Oakley	184 S.E.2d 318	12
1972	West Virginia Board of Regents v. Fairmont, Morgantown & Pittsburgh Railroad	189 S.E.2d 40	9

Showing the 15 most-cited of 31 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 John E. Carrigan on?: John E. Carrigan 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

1 year 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).