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 2006 / Former Justice

John D. Minton Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Kentucky

John D. Minton Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, who joined the court in 2006. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1952 · age 74
Tenure: 2006 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	Supreme Court of Kentucky	–	–

Education

Western Kentucky University
University of Kentucky

Judicial Record

In our data, Minton authored 611 published opinions for the court (2006–2018), plus 27 dissents and 19 concurrences. Most cited: Fox v. Grayson (225 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. 643 of these were attributed to Minton 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
2010	Fox v. Grayson†	317 S.W.3d 1	225
2006	Rowan County v. Sloas· Dissent†	201 S.W.3d 469	204
2013	Shelton v. Kentucky Easter Seals Society, Inc.†	413 S.W.3d 901	198
2014	Toler v. Süd-Chemie, Inc.†	458 S.W.3d 276	156
2007	Cumberland Valley Contractors, Inc. v. Bell County Coal Corp.	238 S.W.3d 644	150
2012	Osborne v. Keeney†	399 S.W.3d 1	145
2007	Clark v. Commonwealth†	223 S.W.3d 90	145
2010	Blankenship v. Collier· Dissent†	302 S.W.3d 665	107
2010	Cincinnati Insurance Co. v. Motorists Mutual Insurance Co.†	306 S.W.3d 69	95
2011	St. Luke Hospital, Inc. v. Straub†	354 S.W.3d 529	91
2010	Fluke Corp. v. LeMaster†	306 S.W.3d 55	82
2010	Travis v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	327 S.W.3d 456	76
2009	Caneyville Volunteer Fire Department v. Green's Motorcycle Salvage, Inc.· Concurrence†	286 S.W.3d 790	76
2009	McCloud v. Commonwealth†	286 S.W.3d 780	72
2008	Benet v. Commonwealth†	253 S.W.3d 528	72

Showing the 15 most-cited of 657 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 John D. Minton Jr. on?: John D. Minton Jr. 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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20 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).