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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Mississippi / Joined 1966 / Served to 1982

Lemuel A. Smith Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Mississippi

Lemuel A. Smith Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi, who joined the court in 1966. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1904 · age 122
Tenure: 1966–1982 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1966	Supreme Court of Mississippi	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 344 published opinions for the court (1965–1982), plus 7 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Gray v. State (269 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. 229 of these were attributed to Smith 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
1979	Gray v. State	375 So. 2d 994	269
1973	Shelton v. Kindred	279 So. 2d 642	119
1974	Spikes v. State	302 So. 2d 250	84
1971	Smith v. Temco, Inc.	252 So. 2d 212	81
1967	Rainey v. Rainey	205 So. 2d 514	62
1970	Jackson Ready-Mix Concrete v. Sexton	235 So. 2d 267	50
1971	Westmoreland v. State	246 So. 2d 487	47
1973	Craft v. State	271 So. 2d 735	46
1974	Pierce v. State	289 So. 2d 901	36
1967	Gilchrist Tractor Company v. Stribling	192 So. 2d 409	36
1972	Myers v. State	268 So. 2d 353	34
1969	Matula v. State	220 So. 2d 833	33
1981	Catchings v. State†	394 So. 2d 869	32
1967	Quarles v. State	199 So. 2d 58	32
1969	Brocato v. Walker	220 So. 2d 340	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 353 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 Mississippi reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Lemuel A. Smith Jr. on?: Lemuel A. Smith Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi.

Sources

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

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