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

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

Supreme Court of Oklahoma / Joined 1978 / Served to 2010

Marian P. Opala

Justice, Supreme Court of Oklahoma

Marian P. Opala was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, who joined the court in 1978. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1921–2010
Tenure: 1978–2010 · 32 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	Supreme Court of Oklahoma	–	–

Education

Oklahoma City University
Oklahoma City University

Judicial Record

In our data, Opala authored 581 published opinions for the court (1979–2010), plus 185 dissents and 216 concurrences. Most cited: Burk v. K-Mart Corp. (352 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. 448 of these were attributed to Opala 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
1989	Burk v. K-Mart Corp.· Concurrence†	770 P.2d 24	352
1984	Parks v. Norman Municipal Hospital	684 P.2d 548	333
1996	Neil Acquisition, L.L.C. v. Wingrod Investment Corp.	932 P.2d 1100	289
1999	Patel v. OMH Medical Center, Inc.	1999 OK 33	269
1982	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Raskin	642 P.2d 262	251
1988	Reynolds v. Porter	760 P.2d 816	229
1998	Miller v. Miller	1998 OK 24	214
1981	Tweedy v. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n	624 P.2d 1049	200
2005	Badillo v. Mid Century Insurance Co.· Dissent†	2005 OK 48	198
1992	Tate v. Browning-Ferris, Inc.	833 P.2d 1218	192
1986	Chamberlin v. Chamberlin	720 P.2d 721	182
1995	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Eakin	914 P.2d 644	173
1982	Hamid v. Sew Original	645 P.2d 496	169
1991	Buzzard v. Farmers Ins. Co., Inc.· Concurrence†	824 P.2d 1105	168
2003	Gladstone v. Bartlesville Independent School District No. 30	2003 OK 30	159

Showing the 15 most-cited of 985 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 Oklahoma reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Marian P. Opala on?: Marian P. Opala was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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