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

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

Supreme Court of Missouri / Joined 2004 / Active

Mary Rhodes Russell

Justice, Supreme Court of Missouri

Mary Rhodes Russell is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri, serving since 2004. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1958 · age 68
Tenure: Since 2004 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2004	Supreme Court of Missouri	–	–

Education

Truman State University
University of Missouri-Columbia

Judicial Record

In our data, Russell authored 191 published opinions for the court (1972–2025), plus 10 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Nash (206 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. 62 of these were attributed to Russell 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
2011	State v. Nash	339 S.W.3d 500	206
2008	Southers v. City of Farmington	263 S.W.3d 603	195
2007	Daugherty v. City of Maryland Heights	231 S.W.3d 814	161
2010	Fleshner v. Pepose Vision Institute, P.C.	304 S.W.3d 81	155
2016	State of Missouri v. Blaec James Lammers	479 S.W.3d 624	141
2008	Lynch v. Lynch	260 S.W.3d 834	121
2009	Roberts v. State	276 S.W.3d 833	120
2008	State v. Freeman	269 S.W.3d 422	104
2005	Ameristar Jet Charter, Inc. v. Dodson International Parts, Inc.	155 S.W.3d 50	95
2012	State v. Liberty· Concurrence†	370 S.W.3d 537	94
2007	State v. March	216 S.W.3d 663	87
2012	State v. Bolden†	371 S.W.3d 802	79
2005	State v. Madorie	156 S.W.3d 351	75
2012	Watts ex rel. Watts v. Lester E. Cox Medical Centers· Concurrence†	376 S.W.3d 633	74
2005	Trimble v. Pracna	167 S.W.3d 706	72

Showing the 15 most-cited of 206 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 Missouri reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Mary Rhodes Russell on?: Mary Rhodes Russell is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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