How do judges of the Supreme Court of South Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is legislative election.

Supreme Court of South Carolina / Joined 1926 / Served to 1944

John Gates Stabler

Justice, Supreme Court of South Carolina

John Gates Stabler was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, who joined the court in 1926. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1871–1940
Tenure: 1926–1944 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1926	Supreme Court of South Carolina	–	–

Education

Wofford College

Judicial Record

In our data, Stabler authored 587 published opinions for the court (1920–1940), plus 20 dissents and 19 concurrences. Most cited: State Ex Rel. Richards v. Moorer (73 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. 9 of these were attributed to Stabler 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
1929	State Ex Rel. Richards v. Moorer	150 S.E. 269	73
1938	Mishoe v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co.· Separate	197 S.E. 97	54
1926	Rogers v. Atlantic Life Insurance Co.	133 S.E. 215	52
1935	Fulghum v. Bleakley	181 S.E. 30	50
1929	Green v. City of Rock Hill	147 S.E. 346	44
1939	Hubbard v. Rowe	5 S.E.2d 187	43
1930	Smith v. Todd	152 S.E. 506	42
1932	Johnson v. New York Life Insurance Co.	164 S.E. 175	36
1939	State v. Kimbrell· Dissent	4 S.E.2d 121	35
1928	Wingfield v. South Carolina Tax Commission	144 S.E. 846	33
1931	Ott v. American Fidelity & Casualty Co.	159 S.E. 635	31
1930	State v. Gellis	155 S.E. 849	30
1929	Harvie v. Heise, Sheriff	148 S.E. 66	30
1937	Gardner v. Kirven	191 S.E. 814	29
1933	Cathcart v. City of Columbia	170 S.E. 435	29

Showing the 15 most-cited of 627 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 South Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is legislative election.
Which court was John Gates Stabler on?: John Gates Stabler was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Sources

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

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