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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Kentucky / Joined 1982 / Served to 1999

Robert F. Stephens

Justice, Supreme Court of Kentucky

Robert F. Stephens was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1927–2002
Tenure: 1982–1999 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

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

Education

University of Kentucky

Judicial Record

In our data, Stephens authored 526 published opinions for the court (1980–1999), plus 74 dissents and 21 concurrences. Most cited: Special Fund v. Francis (290 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. 505 of these were attributed to Stephens 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
1986	Special Fund v. Francis	708 S.W.2d 641	290
1989	Rose v. Council for Better Education, Inc.	790 S.W.2d 186	284
1999	United Parcel Service Co. v. Rickert· Dissent†	996 S.W.2d 464	184
1994	Bell v. Commonwealth	875 S.W.2d 882	177
1998	Yeoman v. Com., Health Policy Bd.	983 S.W.2d 459	172
1987	Slaughter v. Commonwealth	744 S.W.2d 407	159
1992	Mullins v. Commonwealth Life Insurance Co.	839 S.W.2d 245	151
1997	Stringer v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	956 S.W.2d 883	148
1990	Humana of Kentucky, Inc. v. Seitz	796 S.W.2d 1	139
1984	Legislative Research Commission Ex Rel. Prather v. Brown	664 S.W.2d 907	134
1997	Bowling v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	942 S.W.2d 293	131
1997	Withers v. University of Kentucky· Concurrence†	939 S.W.2d 340	131
1998	Williams v. Wilson· Concurrence†	972 S.W.2d 260	118
1981	Raine v. Drasin	621 S.W.2d 895	105
1994	Bussell v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	882 S.W.2d 111	95

Showing the 15 most-cited of 621 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 Kentucky reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Robert F. Stephens on?: Robert F. Stephens was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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