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

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

Kansas Supreme Court / Joined 1971 / Served to 1978

Perry L. Owsley

Justice, Kansas Supreme Court

Perry L. Owsley was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1915–1979
Tenure: 1971–1978 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	Kansas Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Owsley authored 227 published opinions for the court (1971–1979), plus 15 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Spruill Motors, Inc. v. Universal Underwriters Insurance (112 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. 37 of these were attributed to Owsley 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
1973	Spruill Motors, Inc. v. Universal Underwriters Insurance	512 P.2d 403	112
1978	State Ex Rel. Schneider v. Liggett	576 P.2d 221	103
1975	State v. Irving	533 P.2d 1225	89
1976	Van Hoozer v. Farmers Insurance Exchange	549 P.2d 1354	86
1973	Froelich v. Adair	516 P.2d 993	76
1972	Thompson v. Amis· Dissent†	493 P.2d 1259	72
1973	State v. Gustin	510 P.2d 1290	71
1975	State v. Boster	539 P.2d 294	69
1978	Bowen v. Westerhaus· Dissent†	578 P.2d 1102	64
1976	State v. Lassley	545 P.2d 383	63
1977	State v. Rueckert	561 P.2d 850	60
1973	State v. Davis	515 P.2d 802	60
1977	United American State Bank v. Wild West Chrysler Plymouth, Inc.	561 P.2d 792	59
1978	Gerchberg Ex Rel. Gerchberg v. Loney· Concurrence†	576 P.2d 593	58
1975	State v. Arney	544 P.2d 334	58

Showing the 15 most-cited of 245 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 Kansas Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Perry L. Owsley on?: Perry L. Owsley was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court.

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.

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