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 1945 / Served to 1951

Oliver Starr

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Oliver Starr was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana, who joined the court in 1945. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1883–1961
Tenure: 1945–1951 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1945	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Education

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Judicial Record

In our data, Starr authored 119 published opinions for the court (1945–1950), plus 3 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Wright v. Peabody Coal Co. (67 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 Starr 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
1948	Wright v. Peabody Coal Co.	77 N.E.2d 116	67
1948	Kosciusko County Rural Electric Membership Corp. v. Public Service Commission	77 N.E.2d 572	65
1947	Tobin v. McClellan	73 N.E.2d 679	63
1950	Schmittler v. State	93 N.E.2d 184	50
1947	Heflin v. Red Front Cash & Carry Stores, Inc.	75 N.E.2d 662	50
1948	State Ex Rel. Black v. Burch	80 N.E.2d 294	48
1948	State v. Stabb	79 N.E.2d 392	40
1947	Meadows v. Hickman	73 N.E.2d 343	37
1947	Pub. Ser. Com. v. Ind'p'ls Railways	72 N.E.2d 434	33
1948	Todd v. State	81 N.E.2d 530	32
1947	State Ex Rel. Bradshaw v. Probate Court· Dissent	73 N.E.2d 769	32
1945	Brattain v. State	61 N.E.2d 462	31
1945	Henschen v. New York Central Railroad	60 N.E.2d 738	31
1947	State Ex Rel. Buttz v. Marion Circuit Court	72 N.E.2d 225	29
1946	Fidelity Trust Co. v. Downing	68 N.E.2d 789	29

Showing the 15 most-cited of 123 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 Oliver Starr on?: Oliver Starr 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

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6 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).