How do judges of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia / Joined 1972 / Served to 1972

Oliver D. Kessel

Justice, Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia

Oliver D. Kessel was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1901–1992
Tenure: 1972–1972

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kessel authored 13 published opinions for the court (1972), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Hudgins v. Crowder and Freeman, Inc. (29 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. 2 of these were attributed to Kessel 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
1972	Hudgins v. Crowder and Freeman, Inc.	191 S.E.2d 443	29
1972	Sellers v. Owens-Illinois Glass Company	191 S.E.2d 166	25
1972	Lancaster v. Potomac Edison Co. of West Virginia	192 S.E.2d 234	15
1972	State v. Haines	192 S.E.2d 879	13
1972	Hughes v. State Workmen's Compensation Commissioner†	156 W. Va. 146	12
1972	State Ex Rel. Wren v. Wood	190 S.E.2d 479	11
1972	Shields v. Church Brothers, Inc.	193 S.E.2d 151	9
1972	Hines v. Hoover	192 S.E.2d 485	6
1972	Orndoff v. Rowan	192 S.E.2d 220	6
1972	Thomas v. Ramey	192 S.E.2d 873	6
1972	State ex rel. West Virginia Truck Stop, Inc. v. Belcher· Dissent†	156 W. Va. 183	6
1972	State Ex Rel. Varner v. Janco	191 S.E.2d 504	6
1972	State Ex Rel. Browning v. Jarrell	192 S.E.2d 493	5
1972	Hughes v. STATE WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION COM'R	191 S.E.2d 606	2

Showing the 14 most-cited of 14 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 Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Oliver D. Kessel on?: Oliver D. Kessel was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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Joined the court in 1972. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).