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

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

Supreme Court of Indiana / Joined 1933 / Served to 1945

Michael Louis Fansler

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Michael Louis Fansler was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana, who joined the court in 1933. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1883–1963
Tenure: 1933–1945 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1933	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Education

University of Notre Dame

Judicial Record

In our data, Fansler authored 466 published opinions for the court (1933–1944), plus 6 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Knox County Council v. State Ex Rel. McCormick (112 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. 4 of these were attributed to Fansler 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
1940	Knox County Council v. State Ex Rel. McCormick	29 N.E.2d 405	112
1941	State Ex Rel. White v. Hilgemann, Judge	34 N.E.2d 129	91
1935	Opple v. Ray	195 N.E. 81	73
1941	Tucker v. State	35 N.E.2d 270	70
1935	Brindley v. Meara	198 N.E. 301	70
1935	Miles v. Department of Treasury	199 N.E. 372	63
1938	Kokenes v. State	13 N.E.2d 524	61
1938	Peats v. State	12 N.E.2d 270	56
1933	Kelley v. State	185 N.E. 453	56
1940	Chadwick, Treasurer v. City of Crawfordsville	24 N.E.2d 937	55
1942	Marks v. State	40 N.E.2d 108	51
1935	Walter v. State	195 N.E. 268	50
1936	State Ex Rel. Kunkel v. Laporte Circuit Court	200 N.E. 614	49
1939	Orey v. Mutual Life Insurance Co. of N.Y.	19 N.E.2d 547	48
1938	Iterman v. Baker	15 N.E.2d 365	48

Showing the 15 most-cited of 475 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 Indiana reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Michael Louis Fansler on?: Michael Louis Fansler was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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