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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Oregon Supreme Court / Joined 1958 / Served to 1977

Kenneth J. O'Connell

Justice, Oregon Supreme Court

Kenneth J. O'Connell was a Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1958. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1909–2000
Tenure: 1958–1977 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1958	Oregon Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, O'Connell authored 410 published opinions for the court (1958–1977), plus 102 dissents and 52 concurrences. Most cited: Deras v. Myers (151 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. 571 of these were attributed to O'Connell 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
1975	Deras v. Myers†	535 P.2d 541	151
1962	State v. Chinn· Dissent†	373 P.2d 392	135
1974	State v. Florance· Dissent†	527 P.2d 1202	128
1975	State v. Boyd†	533 P.2d 795	124
1967	Heaton v. Ford Motor Co.· Dissent†	435 P.2d 806	121
1968	State Ex Rel. Western Seed Production Corp. v. Campbell· Concurrence†	442 P.2d 215	111
1971	Wiener v. Gamma Phi Chapter of Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity†	485 P.2d 18	109
1958	Cook v. Michael†	330 P.2d 1926	109
1972	Fulton Insurance Co. v. White Motor Corp.· Concurrence†	493 P.2d 138	108
1959	Ramstead v. Morgan†	347 P.2d 594	106
1969	Ferguson v. Birmingham Fire Insurance Company†	460 P.2d 342	102
1960	Williamson v. McKenna†	354 P.2d 56	99
1971	State v. Woolard· Concurrence†	484 P.2d 314	96
1960	Warren v. MARION COUNTY†	353 P.2d 257	94
1961	MacEwan v. HOLM†	359 P.2d 413	93

Showing the 15 most-cited of 571 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 Oregon Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Kenneth J. O'Connell on?: Kenneth J. O'Connell was a Justice of the Oregon 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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19 years on the Oregon Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).