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

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

Supreme Court of Indiana / Joined 1969 / Served to 1994

Richard M. Givan

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Richard M. Givan was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1921–2009
Tenure: 1969–1994 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Givan authored 1,555 published opinions for the court (1969–1994), plus 170 dissents and 39 concurrences. Most cited: Dishman v. State (358 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. 631 of these were attributed to Givan 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
1988	Dishman v. State	525 N.E.2d 284	358
1990	Rankin v. State	563 N.E.2d 533	347
1982	Travelers Indemnity Co. v. Armstrong· Dissent†	442 N.E.2d 349	271
1991	Burrell v. Meads· Dissent†	569 N.E.2d 637	249
1986	White v. State· Concurrence†	497 N.E.2d 893	232
1975	Pirtle v. State· Concurrence†	323 N.E.2d 634	210
1993	Price v. State· Dissent†	622 N.E.2d 954	209
1992	Lannan v. State· Concurrence†	600 N.E.2d 1334	204
1978	Bruce v. State· Concurrence†	375 N.E.2d 1042	200
1991	Spradlin v. State· Dissent†	569 N.E.2d 948	191
1991	Shuamber v. Henderson· Dissent†	579 N.E.2d 452	176
1985	Eli Lilly & Co. v. Home Insurance Co.	482 N.E.2d 467	172
1983	Havert v. Caldwell	452 N.E.2d 154	167
1981	Shideler v. Dwyer· Dissent†	417 N.E.2d 281	164
1981	German v. State· Dissent†	428 N.E.2d 234	163

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,765 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 Indiana reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Richard M. Givan on?: Richard M. Givan was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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