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 1999 / Former Justice

Robert D. Rucker

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Robert D. Rucker was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana (5 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1999. He previously served on the Indiana Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1999 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Indiana Court of Appeals	–	–
1999	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Education

Valparaiso University
Valparaiso University

Judicial Record

In our data, Rucker authored 507 published opinions for the court (1991–2017), plus 117 dissents and 66 concurrences. Most cited: Anglemyer v. State (1,831 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. 292 of these were attributed to Rucker 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
2007	Anglemyer v. State	868 N.E.2d 482	1,831
2007	Anglemyer v. State	875 N.E.2d 218	1,479
2006	Childress v. State	848 N.E.2d 1073	1,438
2005	Bester v. Lake County Office of Family & Children	839 N.E.2d 143	1,005
2013	R.C. v. Indiana Department of Child Services†	989 N.E.2d 1225	524
2014	In the Matter of the Termination of the Parent-Child Relationship of E.M. and El.M., E.M. v. Indiana Department of Child Services· Dissent†	4 N.E.3d 636	506
2009	Pruitt v. State· Dissent†	903 N.E.2d 899	450
2012	Andrew Conley v. State of Indiana· Dissent†	972 N.E.2d 864	392
2004	Fisher v. State	810 N.E.2d 674	377
2009	Williams v. Tharp· Dissent†	914 N.E.2d 756	330
2006	Cooper v. State	854 N.E.2d 831	297
2008	Henley v. State	881 N.E.2d 639	290
2001	Mangold Ex Rel. Mangold v. Indiana Department of Natural Resources	756 N.E.2d 970	281
2002	Spivey v. State· Concurrence†	761 N.E.2d 831	273
2006	Reed v. State	856 N.E.2d 1189	249

Showing the 15 most-cited of 690 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 Robert D. Rucker on?: Robert D. Rucker 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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26 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).