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 2013 / Active

Michelle M. Keller

Justice, Supreme Court of Kentucky

Michelle M. Keller is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, serving since 2013. She previously served on the Kentucky Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2013 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	Kentucky Court of Appeals	–	–
2013	Supreme Court of Kentucky	–	–

Education

Northern Kentucky University
Northern Kentucky University
Northern Kentucky University

Judicial Record

In our data, Keller authored 119 published opinions for the court (2007–2026), plus 7 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: Sargent v. Shaffer (142 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. 124 of these were attributed to Keller 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
2015	Sargent v. Shaffer· Dissent†	467 S.W.3d 198	142
2017	University of Louisville v. Rothstein, Mark†	532 S.W.3d 644	102
2009	Bowerman v. Black Equipment Co.· Dissent†	297 S.W.3d 858	79
2007	Barnett v. Mercy Health Partners-Lourdes, Inc.†	233 S.W.3d 723	51
2015	Caldwell v. Chauvin· Concurrence†	464 S.W.3d 139	49
2013	Saint Joseph Hospital v. Frye†	415 S.W.3d 631	49
2014	Tackett v. Commonwealth†	445 S.W.3d 20	48
2017	Parker v. Webster County Coal, LLC†	529 S.W.3d 759	47
2015	Martin v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	456 S.W.3d 1	43
2014	Boyd v. Commonwealth†	439 S.W.3d 126	43
2014	Pearce v. University of Louisville ex rel. Board of Trustees· Concurrence†	448 S.W.3d 746	40
2013	McDaniel v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	415 S.W.3d 643	40
2015	Jeffrey Pettingill v. Sara Yount Pettingill†	480 S.W.3d 920	39
2017	William Harry Meece v. Commonwealth of Kentucky†	529 S.W.3d 281	37
2013	Ballard v. 1400 Willow Council of Co-Owners, Inc.†	430 S.W.3d 229	36

Showing the 15 most-cited of 140 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 is Michelle M. Keller on?: Michelle M. Keller is 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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13 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).