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

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

Supreme Court of Oklahoma / Joined 1956 / Served to 1983

Pat Irwin

Justice, Supreme Court of Oklahoma

Pat Irwin was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, who joined the court in 1956. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1921–1999
Tenure: 1956–1983 · 27 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1956	Supreme Court of Oklahoma	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Irwin authored 643 published opinions for the court (1899–1983), plus 45 dissents and 34 concurrences. Most cited: Kirkland v. General Motors Corporation (340 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. 222 of these were attributed to Irwin 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
1974	Kirkland v. General Motors Corporation· Dissent†	521 P.2d 1353	340
1982	Timmons v. Royal Globe Insurance Co.· Concurrence†	653 P.2d 907	149
1983	Vanderpool v. State· Dissent†	672 P.2d 1153	131
1980	Draper v. State· Separate†	621 P.2d 1142	123
1980	Kimery v. Public Service Co. of Oklahoma	622 P.2d 1066	92
1980	Independent School District No. 89 of Oklahoma County v. Oklahoma City Federation of Teachers, Local 2309· Concurrence†	612 P.2d 719	88
1974	Brickner v. Gooden	525 P.2d 632	86
1980	Marley v. Cannon	618 P.2d 401	82
1977	Retherford v. Halliburton Co.	572 P.2d 966	75
1969	Oklahoma Water Resources Board v. Central Oklahoma Master Conservancy District· Separate†	464 P.2d 748	72
1905	Reaves v. Reaves	82 P. 490	71
1968	State Ex Rel. Blankenship v. Freeman	440 P.2d 744	67
1960	Boughton v. Farmers Insurance Exchange	354 P.2d 1085	67
1975	Dablemont v. State, Department of Public Safety	543 P.2d 563	64
1978	Oklahoma Ass'n of Municipal Attorneys v. State†	577 P.2d 1310	57

Showing the 15 most-cited of 728 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 Oklahoma reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Pat Irwin on?: Pat Irwin was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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