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

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

Kansas Supreme Court / Joined 1977 / Served to 1995

Kay McFarland

Justice, Kansas Supreme Court

Kay McFarland was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1935 · age 91
Tenure: 1977–1995 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Kansas Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Washburn University
Washburn University

Judicial Record

In our data, McFarland authored 450 published opinions for the court (1977–2008), plus 37 dissents and 29 concurrences. Most cited: Gillespie v. Seymour (203 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. 125 of these were attributed to McFarland 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
1991	Gillespie v. Seymour	823 P.2d 782	203
1980	Kennedy v. City of Sawyer· Concurrence†	618 P.2d 788	164
1983	Durflinger v. Artiles	673 P.2d 86	161
1990	Glenn v. Fleming· Concurrence†	799 P.2d 79	151
1993	Nero v. Kansas State University· Concurrence†	861 P.2d 768	143
1990	Samsel v. Wheeler Transport Services, Inc.· Concurrence†	789 P.2d 541	130
1984	Jackson v. City of Kansas City	680 P.2d 877	116
1980	Nocktonick Ex Rel. Matson v. Nocktonick· Dissent†	611 P.2d 135	108
1995	Mitzner Ex Rel. Bishop v. State, Kansas Department of Social & Rehabilitation Services	257 Kan. 258	107
1988	Kansas Malpractice Victims Coalition v. Bell· Dissent†	757 P.2d 251	107
1983	Mays v. Ciba-Geigy Corp.	661 P.2d 348	106
1994	Dickens v. Snodgrass, Dunlap & Co.	872 P.2d 252	95
1992	Simon v. National Farmers Organization, Inc.	829 P.2d 884	94
1994	Jones v. Hansen· Dissent†	867 P.2d 303	93
1980	Friends University v. W. R. Grace & Co.	608 P.2d 936	90

Showing the 15 most-cited of 516 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 Kansas Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Kay McFarland on?: Kay McFarland was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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