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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Georgia / Joined 1982 / Served to 1992

Richard Bell

Justice, Supreme Court of Georgia

Richard Bell was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1920–2005
Tenure: 1982–1992 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Supreme Court of Georgia	–	–

Education

Emory University

Judicial Record

In our data, Bell authored 364 published opinions for the court (1982–1992), plus 14 dissents and 19 concurrences. Most cited: Williams v. State (257 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. 110 of these were attributed to Bell 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
1983	Williams v. State	251 Ga. 749	257
1984	Felker v. State	314 S.E.2d 621	196
1985	Cuzzort v. State· Concurrence†	334 S.E.2d 661	181
1986	Milam v. State	341 S.E.2d 216	180
1991	Stephens v. State· Dissent†	405 S.E.2d 483	157
1991	Chandler v. State	405 S.E.2d 669	147
1989	Smith v. State	377 S.E.2d 158	146
1984	Head v. State· Concurrence†	322 S.E.2d 228	117
1991	Stripling v. State	401 S.E.2d 500	109
1984	White v. State	317 S.E.2d 196	103
1983	Sabel v. State	300 S.E.2d 663	96
1992	Lively v. State	421 S.E.2d 528	90
1986	Cook v. State	340 S.E.2d 891	90
1988	Corporation of Mercer University v. National Gypsum Co.· Concurrence†	368 S.E.2d 732	88
1991	Fowler v. Vineyard	405 S.E.2d 678	87

Showing the 15 most-cited of 397 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 Georgia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Richard Bell on?: Richard Bell was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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