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

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

Supreme Court of Oklahoma / Joined 1992 / Former Justice

Joseph M. Watt

Justice, Supreme Court of Oklahoma

Joseph M. Watt was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, who joined the court in 1992. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1947 · age 79
Tenure: 1992 · 34 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1992	Supreme Court of Oklahoma	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Watt authored 291 published opinions for the court (1992–2017), plus 54 dissents and 33 concurrences. Most cited: In Re Initiative Petition No. 379 (617 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. 197 of these were attributed to Watt 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
2006	In Re Initiative Petition No. 379	2006 OK 89	617
2005	Badillo v. Mid Century Insurance Co.	2005 OK 48	198
2001	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Bolusky· Dissent†	2001 OK 26	163
2005	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Garrett	2005 OK 91	146
1996	Bivins v. State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Memorial Hospital· Dissent†	917 P.2d 456	140
2002	State Ex Rel. Tal v. City of Oklahoma City· Dissent†	2002 OK 97	134
1998	Gaylord Entertainment Co. v. Thompson· Dissent†	1998 OK 30	134
2014	SMITH v. CITY OF STILLWATER· Concurrence†	2014 OK 42	121
2000	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Taylor· Dissent†	2000 OK 35	120
2012	Williams Companies v. Dunkelgod†	295 P.3d 1107	105
2006	Zeier v. Zimmer, Inc.	2006 OK 98	104
2007	Spencer v. Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co.	2007 OK 76	98
2006	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Wilburn	2006 OK 50	97
2007	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Association v. Combs· Concurrence†	2007 OK 65	95
2005	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Anderson	2005 OK 9	92

Showing the 15 most-cited of 379 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 Oklahoma reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Joseph M. Watt on?: Joseph M. Watt was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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