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 1974 / Served to 1988

Julius B. Ness

Justice, Supreme Court of South Carolina

Julius B. Ness was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1916 · age 110
Tenure: 1974–1988 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	Supreme Court of South Carolina	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Ness authored 537 published opinions for the court (1961–1989), plus 77 dissents and 22 concurrences. Most cited: McCall v. Batson (145 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. 225 of these were attributed to Ness 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
1985	McCall v. Batson	329 S.E.2d 741	145
1985	State v. Mitchell	336 S.E.2d 150	141
1981	Stevenson v. Stevenson	279 S.E.2d 616	116
1977	Nienow v. Nienow	232 S.E.2d 504	103
1981	State v. Sullivan	282 S.E.2d 838	101
1980	Elam v. Elam	268 S.E.2d 109	100
1978	Young Ex Rel. Estate of Young v. Tide Craft, Inc.· Dissent†	242 S.E.2d 671	91
1978	State v. Blackburn	247 S.E.2d 334	79
1977	Sloan Construction Co. v. Central National Insurance	236 S.E.2d 818	79
1986	State v. Kornahrens	350 S.E.2d 180	73
1986	South Carolina State Ports Authority v. Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Inc.	346 S.E.2d 324	69
1979	State v. Tyner	258 S.E.2d 559	69
1987	Hilton Head Center of South Carolina, Inc. v. Public Service Commission	362 S.E.2d 176	66
1982	Fernander v. Thigpen	293 S.E.2d 424	66
1984	State v. Stroman	316 S.E.2d 395	59

Showing the 15 most-cited of 636 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 Julius B. Ness on?: Julius B. Ness was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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14 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).