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 1912 / Served to 1919

John W. Spencer

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

John W. Spencer was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana (5 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1912. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1864–1939
Tenure: 1912–1919 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1912	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Spencer authored 219 published opinions for the court (1912–1919), plus 5 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: City of Decatur v. Eady (72 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. 226 of these were attributed to Spencer 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
1917	City of Decatur v. Eady· Concurrence†	186 Ind. 205	72
1913	Indiana National Life Insurance v. McGinnis†	180 Ind. 9	57
1918	Shira v. State ex rel. Ham†	187 Ind. 441	51
1913	Railroad Commission v. Grand Trunk Western Railroad†	179 Ind. 255	49
1916	State ex rel. Williams v. Ellis· Dissent†	184 Ind. 307	48
1917	Smith v. State†	186 Ind. 252	42
1918	Schmitt v. F. W. Cook Brewing Co.· Dissent†	187 Ind. 623	39
1918	Prudential Insurance Co. of America v. Ritchey· Dissent†	188 Ind. 157	37
1915	Dorak v. State†	183 Ind. 622	36
1913	Burroughs v. Burroughs†	180 Ind. 380	32
1918	Bleiweiss v. State†	188 Ind. 184	31
1917	Indianapolis Traction & Terminal Co. v. Hensley†	186 Ind. 479	31
1914	Inland Steel Co. v. Gillespie†	181 Ind. 633	30
1913	Jeffersonville Manufacturing Co. v. Holden†	180 Ind. 301	29
1912	Welty v. State· Dissent†	180 Ind. 411	29

Showing the 15 most-cited of 226 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 W. Spencer on?: John W. Spencer 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

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

6 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).