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 2007

Robert Eugene Lavender

Justice, Supreme Court of Oklahoma

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

Born: 1926 · age 100
Tenure: 1965–2007 · 42 yrs

Judicial service

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Lavender authored 708 published opinions for the court (1965–2007), plus 44 dissents and 20 concurrences. Most cited: Carmichael v. Beller (401 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. 222 of these were attributed to Lavender 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
1996	Carmichael v. Beller	914 P.2d 1051	401
1992	TRW/Reda Pump v. Brewington	829 P.2d 15	252
1988	Ledbetter v. Oklahoma Alcoholic Beverage Laws Enforcement Commission	764 P.2d 172	191
1999	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Doris	1999 OK 94	164
2001	Samman v. Multiple Injury Trust Fund	2001 OK 71	161
2003	Fulsom v. Fulsom	2003 OK 96	156
2004	Head v. McCracken	2004 OK 84	141
2002	State Ex Rel. Tal v. City of Oklahoma City†	2002 OK 97	134
2001	Barnes v. Oklahoma Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Co.	2000 OK 55	131
1983	Vanderpool v. State	672 P.2d 1153	131
1992	In Re Initiative Petition No. 349, State Question No. 642· Concurrence†	838 P.2d 1	126
1968	Bomford v. Socony Mobil Oil Co.· Dissent†	440 P.2d 713	120
1997	Lockhart v. Loosen	1997 OK 103	119
1981	Keel v. Titan Construction Corp.	639 P.2d 1228	117
2003	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Bar Ass'n v. Taylor	2003 OK 56	115

Showing the 15 most-cited of 779 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 Robert Eugene Lavender on?: Robert Eugene Lavender 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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42 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).