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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Kentucky / Joined 1975 / Served to 1983

Marvin J. Sternberg

Justice, Supreme Court of Kentucky

Marvin J. Sternberg was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, who joined the court in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1912–1994
Tenure: 1975–1983 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1975	Supreme Court of Kentucky	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Sternberg authored 141 published opinions for the court (1976–1982), plus 10 dissents. Most cited: Payne v. Commonwealth (131 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. 99 of these were attributed to Sternberg 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
1981	Payne v. Commonwealth	623 S.W.2d 867	131
1982	Cherry v. Cherry	634 S.W.2d 423	120
1982	Inman v. Inman	648 S.W.2d 847	97
1981	Kentucky Commission on Human Rights v. Fraser· Dissent†	625 S.W.2d 852	94
1977	McDonald v. Commonwealth	554 S.W.2d 84	64
1980	Smith v. Commonwealth	599 S.W.2d 900	61
1978	Brewster v. Commonwealth	568 S.W.2d 232	54
1982	Williams v. Commonwealth	644 S.W.2d 335	44
1977	Pruitt v. Bugg Brothers	547 S.W.2d 123	44
1979	Silverburg v. Commonwealth	587 S.W.2d 241	43
1978	Scruggs v. Commonwealth	566 S.W.2d 405	42
1981	Central Bank & Trust Co. v. Kincaid	617 S.W.2d 32	41
1980	Wilson v. Commonwealth	601 S.W.2d 280	37
1979	Edmonds v. Commonwealth	586 S.W.2d 24	35
1978	Williams v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	569 S.W.2d 139	34

Showing the 15 most-cited of 151 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 Kentucky reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Marvin J. Sternberg on?: Marvin J. Sternberg was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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