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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Ohio / Joined 1977 / Served to 1989

Ralph Sidney Locher

Justice, Supreme Court of Ohio

Ralph Sidney Locher was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio (6 judges, selected by partisan election), who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1915–2004
Tenure: 1977–1989 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Supreme Court of Ohio	–	–

Education

Bluffton University
Case Western Reserve University

Judicial Record

In our data, Locher authored 140 published opinions for the court (1977–1988), plus 126 dissents and 56 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Long (3,848 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. 322 of these were attributed to Locher 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
1978	State v. Long· Concurrence†	53 Ohio St. 2d 91	3,848
1977	State v. Williams· Concurrence†	51 Ohio St. 2d 112	817
1982	State v. Cole†	2 Ohio St. 3d 112	797
1980	State v. Jackson†	64 Ohio St. 2d 107	791
1988	Bostic v. Connor†	37 Ohio St. 3d 144	718
1980	Ohio v. Freeman†	64 Ohio St. 2d 291	666
1981	Pitts v. Ohio Department of Transportation†	67 Ohio St. 2d 378	621
1984	Kisil v. City of Sandusky· Dissent†	12 Ohio St. 3d 30	589
1983	State v. Williams†	6 Ohio St. 3d 281	530
1987	State v. Thompson· Dissent†	33 Ohio St. 3d 1	525
1982	Blankenship v. Cincinnati Milacron Chemicals, Inc.· Concurrence†	69 Ohio St. 2d 608	394
1981	Hounshell v. American States Insurance· Dissent†	67 Ohio St. 2d 427	394
1988	State v. Johnston†	39 Ohio St. 3d 48	376
1987	State ex rel. Burley v. Coil Packing, Inc.· Concurrence†	31 Ohio St. 3d 18	376
1982	State ex rel. Ramirez v. Industrial Commission· Dissent†	69 Ohio St. 2d 630	325

Showing the 15 most-cited of 322 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 Ohio reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Ralph Sidney Locher on?: Ralph Sidney Locher was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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