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 1965 / Served to 2004

Ralph B. Hodges

Justice, Supreme Court of Oklahoma

Ralph B. Hodges was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1930–2013
Tenure: 1965–2004 · 39 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	Supreme Court of Oklahoma	–	–

Education

Oklahoma Baptist University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hodges authored 730 published opinions for the court (1965–2004), plus 77 dissents and 50 concurrences. Most cited: Burk v. K-Mart Corp. (352 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. 275 of these were attributed to Hodges 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
1989	Burk v. K-Mart Corp.	770 P.2d 24	352
1993	Kluver v. Weatherford Hospital Authority	859 P.2d 1081	307
1987	McKellips v. Saint Francis Hospital, Inc.	741 P.2d 467	191
1976	Fields v. Volkswagen of America, Inc.	555 P.2d 48	182
1982	Jackson v. Independent School District No. 16	648 P.2d 26	162
1993	Hough v. Leonard· Concurrence†	867 P.2d 438	142
1986	Brigance v. Velvet Dove Restaurant, Inc.	725 P.2d 300	134
1999	Nealis v. Baird· Dissent†	1999 OK 98	130
1976	Keel v. MFA Insurance Company	553 P.2d 153	128
1992	In Re Initiative Petition No. 349, State Question No. 642· Concurrence†	838 P.2d 1	126
1980	Draper v. State	621 P.2d 1142	123
2000	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Taylor· Concurrence†	2000 OK 35	120
1980	Oliver's Sports Center, Inc. v. National Standard Insurance Co.	615 P.2d 291	115
1984	Messler v. Simmons Gun Specialties, Inc.	687 P.2d 121	111
1979	Faulkenberry v. Kansas City Southern Railway Co.· Concurrence†	602 P.2d 203	105

Showing the 15 most-cited of 858 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 Ralph B. Hodges on?: Ralph B. Hodges 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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39 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).