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 2010 / Former Justice

Kaye Gorenflo Hearn

Justice, Supreme Court of South Carolina

Kaye Gorenflo Hearn was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, who joined the court in 2010. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1950 · age 76
Tenure: 2010 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2010	Supreme Court of South Carolina	–	–

Education

Bethany College
University of Virginia-Main Campus

Judicial Record

In our data, Hearn authored 141 published opinions for the court (2010–2019), plus 10 dissents and 20 concurrences. Most cited: Atlantic Coast Builders & Contractors, LLC v. Lewis (154 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. 169 of these were attributed to Hearn 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
2012	Atlantic Coast Builders & Contractors, LLC v. Lewis†	398 S.C. 323	154
2014	Aiken v. Byars†	410 S.C. 534	148
2016	State v. Bennett†	415 S.C. 232	63
2015	State v. Chavis· Concurrence†	412 S.C. 101	60
2014	Kiawah Development Partners v. South Carolina Department of Health & Environmental Control†	411 S.C. 16	59
2010	State v. Torres†	703 S.E.2d 226	51
2012	Grier v. Amisub of South Carolina, Inc.†	397 S.C. 532	50
2016	Van Sellner v. State†	416 S.C. 606	48
2012	Wilburn v. Wilburn†	403 S.C. 372	45
2011	Miles v. Miles†	711 S.E.2d 880	44
2011	Travelscape, LLC v. South Carolina Department of Revenue†	705 S.E.2d 28	41
2013	State v. Cope†	405 S.C. 317	40
2011	Edwards v. State†	710 S.E.2d 60	40
2016	State v. Stukes†	416 S.C. 493	39
2012	State v. Langford†	400 S.C. 421	39

Showing the 15 most-cited of 171 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 Kaye Gorenflo Hearn on?: Kaye Gorenflo Hearn 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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16 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).