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

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

Supreme Court of Missouri / Joined 2007 / Active

Patricia Breckenridge

Justice, Supreme Court of Missouri

Patricia Breckenridge is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri, serving since 2007. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1953 · age 73
Tenure: Since 2007 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2007	Supreme Court of Missouri	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Breckenridge authored 155 published opinions for the court (1991–2023), plus 8 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: White v. Director of Revenue (363 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. 72 of these were attributed to Breckenridge 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
2010	White v. Director of Revenue	321 S.W.3d 298	363
2009	Zink v. State	278 S.W.3d 170	273
2015	Charles K. Moore v. State of Missouri	458 S.W.3d 822	244
2009	State v. Baumruk	280 S.W.3d 600	224
2013	Johnson v. State· Concurrence†	406 S.W.3d 892	155
2011	State v. Celis-Garcia	344 S.W.3d 150	149
2012	McLaughlin v. State†	378 S.W.3d 328	143
2014	Wanda Mayes v. Saint Luke's Hospital of Kansas City, (Consolidated with)Wanda Mayes v. Saint Luke's Hospital of Kansas City	430 S.W.3d 260	112
2014	Travis M. Stanley v. State of Missouri	420 S.W.3d 532	109
2011	S.M. v. E.M.B.R.†	332 S.W.3d 793	105
2010	State v. Deck· Concurrence†	303 S.W.3d 527	98
2013	Swallow v. State†	398 S.W.3d 1	96
2016	State of Missouri v. Robert Blake Blurton	484 S.W.3d 758	94
1991	State Ex Rel. Rothermich v. Gallagher	816 S.W.2d 194	92
2009	Gehrke v. State†	280 S.W.3d 54	91

Showing the 15 most-cited of 177 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 Missouri reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Patricia Breckenridge on?: Patricia Breckenridge is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri.

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.

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