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 1987 / Served to 2008

Joseph E. Lambert

Justice, Supreme Court of Kentucky

Joseph E. Lambert was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, who joined the court in 1987. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1948 · age 78
Tenure: 1987–2008 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	Supreme Court of Kentucky	–	–

Education

Georgetown College
University of Louisville

Judicial Record

In our data, Lambert authored 559 published opinions for the court (1987–2026), plus 101 dissents and 40 concurrences. Most cited: Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. v. Thompson (491 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. 494 of these were attributed to Lambert 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
2000	Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. v. Thompson· Dissent†	11 S.W.3d 575	491
2006	Martin v. Commonwealth†	207 S.W.3d 1	437
1997	Commonwealth v. Burge· Concurrence†	947 S.W.2d 805	200
1997	Stringer v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	956 S.W.2d 883	148
1988	National Collegiate Athletic Ass'n v. Hornung	754 S.W.2d 855	148
2004	Brooks v. Lexington-Fayette Urban County Housing Authority· Dissent†	132 S.W.3d 790	132
1997	Withers v. University of Kentucky	939 S.W.2d 340	131
1999	Motorists Mutual Insurance Co. v. Glass· Dissent†	996 S.W.2d 437	123
1998	Williams v. Wilson	972 S.W.2d 260	118
1994	Beckham v. Bd. of Educ. of Jefferson Cty.	873 S.W.2d 575	117
1992	Goldsmith v. Allied Building Components, Inc.	833 S.W.2d 378	113
2005	Grand Aerie Fraternal Order of Eagles v. Carneyhan· Dissent†	169 S.W.3d 840	103
2004	Woodard v. Commonwealth†	147 S.W.3d 63	100
1992	Commonwealth v. Wasson· Dissent†	842 S.W.2d 487	98
2001	Farmland Mutual Insurance Co. v. Johnson	36 S.W.3d 368	96

Showing the 15 most-cited of 700 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 Joseph E. Lambert on?: Joseph E. Lambert 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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21 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).