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

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

Supreme Court of Missouri / Joined 1965 / Served to 1988

Robert Donnelly

Justice, Supreme Court of Missouri

Robert Donnelly was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1924 · age 102
Tenure: 1965–1988 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Donnelly authored 348 published opinions for the court (1965–1988), plus 139 dissents and 68 concurrences. Most cited: Murphy v. Carron (7,357 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. 341 of these were attributed to Donnelly 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
1976	Murphy v. Carron	536 S.W.2d 30	7,357
1987	Sanders v. State· Dissent†	738 S.W.2d 856	631
1969	Keener v. Dayton Electric Manufacturing Company	445 S.W.2d 362	263
1985	Hoover's Dairy, Inc. v. Mid-America Dairymen, Inc./Special Products, Inc.· Concurrence†	700 S.W.2d 426	246
1979	Seales v. State· Dissent†	580 S.W.2d 733	230
1973	J. E. Hathman, Inc. v. Sigma Alpha Epsilon Club of Columbia· Dissent†	491 S.W.2d 261	222
1977	Jones v. State Highway Commission· Dissent†	557 S.W.2d 225	204
1987	State v. Mallett· Dissent†	732 S.W.2d 527	195
1976	State v. Franco	544 S.W.2d 533	188
1969	Kennedy v. Dixon· Concurrence†	439 S.W.2d 173	185
1983	Bass v. Nooney Co.· Dissent†	646 S.W.2d 765	181
1977	State v. Treadway	558 S.W.2d 646	170
1980	Sours v. State· Dissent†	593 S.W.2d 208	167
1980	Sours v. State· Dissent†	603 S.W.2d 592	161
1977	Blevins v. Cushman Motors	551 S.W.2d 602	153

Showing the 15 most-cited of 555 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 Missouri reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Robert Donnelly on?: Robert Donnelly was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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