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

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

Supreme Court of Indiana / Joined 1870 / Served to 1877

John Pettit

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

John Pettit was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana, who joined the court in 1870. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1807–1877
Tenure: 1870–1877 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1870	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Pettit authored 381 published opinions for the court (1870–1876), plus 10 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Cox v. Louisville, New Albany, & Chicago Railroad (75 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. 399 of these were attributed to Pettit 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
1874	Cox v. Louisville, New Albany, & Chicago Railroad· Concurrence†	48 Ind. 178	75
1875	Scranton v. Stewart· Concurrence†	52 Ind. 68	47
1871	Griffith v. State· Dissent†	36 Ind. 406	46
1871	Cheek v. State†	35 Ind. 492	45
1871	Rush v. Megee†	36 Ind. 69	36
1873	Burdick v. Hunt†	43 Ind. 381	33
1870	Fouty v. Fouty†	34 Ind. 433	31
1870	Adams v. Waggoner†	33 Ind. 531	28
1874	Ferguson v. State†	49 Ind. 33	27
1871	Williams v. Stein†	38 Ind. 89	27
1875	Howard v. State†	50 Ind. 190	26
1870	Holmes v. Bybee· Dissent†	34 Ind. 262	26
1875	Turner v. Wilson· Dissent†	49 Ind. 581	24
1870	Nolte v. Libbert· Dissent†	34 Ind. 163	24
1870	City of Evansville v. Pfisterer†	34 Ind. 36	23

Showing the 15 most-cited of 399 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 Indiana reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was John Pettit on?: John Pettit was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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