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 1879 / Served to 1881

John T. Scott

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

John T. Scott was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana (5 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1879. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1879–1881 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1879	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Education

Franklin College

Judicial Record

In our data, Scott authored 57 published opinions for the court (1879–1880), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Lake Shore & Michigan Southern R. W. Co. v. McCormick (53 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. 60 of these were attributed to Scott 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
1880	Lake Shore & Michigan Southern R. W. Co. v. McCormick†	74 Ind. 440	53
1880	State v. Swift· Dissent†	69 Ind. 505	49
1879	Patton v. Rankin†	68 Ind. 245	25
1879	Peru & Indianapolis Railroad v. Hanna†	68 Ind. 562	22
1880	Irwin v. Smith†	72 Ind. 482	16
1879	Foresman v. Byrns†	68 Ind. 247	15
1879	McFerran v. McFerran†	69 Ind. 29	14
1879	Goodwin v. Smith†	68 Ind. 301	13
1880	Line v. Blizzard†	70 Ind. 23	11
1879	Fisher v. Parry†	68 Ind. 465	11
1879	Bowers v. Fleming†	67 Ind. 541	10
1879	Burns v. Anderson†	68 Ind. 202	10
1880	Hilbish v. Hilbish†	71 Ind. 27	9
1879	Manford v. Firth†	68 Ind. 83	9
1879	Kent v. Taggart†	68 Ind. 163	9

Showing the 15 most-cited of 60 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 T. Scott on?: John T. Scott 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.

1 year 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).