How do judges of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia / Joined 1977 / Served to 1984

Sam R. Harshbarger

Justice, Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia

Sam R. Harshbarger was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1928–1992
Tenure: 1977–1984 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia	–	–

Education

West Virginia University
George Washington University

Judicial Record

In our data, Harshbarger authored 229 published opinions for the court (1977–1985), plus 17 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Goodnight (428 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. 69 of these were attributed to Harshbarger 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
1982	State v. Goodnight	287 S.E.2d 504	428
1979	Pauley v. Kelly	255 S.E.2d 859	248
1977	State Ex Rel. Peacher v. Sencindiver	233 S.E.2d 425	245
1983	State v. Cooper	304 S.E.2d 851	145
1979	State v. Atkins· Dissent†	261 S.E.2d 55	145
1983	State v. Louk	301 S.E.2d 596	122
1983	State v. Louk†	171 W. Va. 639	111
1982	Lee-Norse Co. v. Rutledge	291 S.E.2d 477	106
1983	LaRue v. LaRue· Concurrence†	304 S.E.2d 312	103
1978	State v. Pratt	244 S.E.2d 227	102
1984	Torbett v. Wheeling Dollar Savings & Trust Co.	314 S.E.2d 166	97
1980	West Virginia Judicial Inquiry Commission v. Dostert	271 S.E.2d 427	95
1982	State v. Less· Concurrence†	294 S.E.2d 62	90
1978	State v. Kirtley· Concurrence†	162 W. Va. 249	78
1984	State v. Guthrie	315 S.E.2d 397	75

Showing the 15 most-cited of 255 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 Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Sam R. Harshbarger on?: Sam R. Harshbarger was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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