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 2002 / Active

Lawton R. Nuss

Justice, Kansas Supreme Court

Lawton R. Nuss is a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, serving since 2002. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2002 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2002	Kansas Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Nuss authored 229 published opinions for the court (2002–2019), plus 10 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: In the Interest of B.D.-Y. (492 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. 89 of these were attributed to Nuss 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
2008	In the Interest of B.D.-Y.†	286 Kan. 686	492
2015	State v. Keel· Dissent†	302 Kan. 560	491
2014	Sola-Morales v. State†	300 Kan. 875	489
2008	State v. Skolaut	182 P.3d 1231	346
2015	Neighbor v. Westar Energy, Inc.†	301 Kan. 916	196
2011	Wolfe Electric, Inc. v. Duckworth†	293 Kan. 375	193
2019	State v. Salary†	437 P.3d 953	181
2011	State v. McCaslin	245 P.3d 1030	177
2008	State v. Reid	186 P.3d 713	175
2005	State v. Elnicki	279 Kan. 47	169
2013	State v. Herbel†	296 Kan. 1101	154
2004	State v. Gleason	88 P.3d 218	149
2016	State ex rel. Schmidt v. City of Wichita†	303 Kan. 650	148
2014	Vontress v. State†	299 Kan. 607	146
2010	State v. Aguilar· Dissent†	231 P.3d 563	139

Showing the 15 most-cited of 240 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 is Lawton R. Nuss on?: Lawton R. Nuss is 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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24 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).