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 1871 / Served to 1877

Samuel H. Buskirk

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Samuel H. Buskirk was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana, who joined the court in 1871. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1820–1879
Tenure: 1871–1877 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1871	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Buskirk authored 374 published opinions for the court (1871–1876), plus 5 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Dodge v. Gaylord (90 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. 391 of these were attributed to Buskirk 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
1876	Dodge v. Gaylord†	53 Ind. 365	90
1874	Ohio & Mississippi Railway Co. v. Selby†	47 Ind. 471	79
1872	Cruzan v. Smith†	41 Ind. 288	72
1872	Jeffersonville, Madison, & Indianapolis R. R. v. Hendricks†	41 Ind. 48	68
1874	Aurora Fire Insurance v. Johnson†	46 Ind. 315	57
1871	Whittem v. State†	36 Ind. 196	57
1873	Lindley v. Kelley†	42 Ind. 294	56
1872	Cluck v. State†	40 Ind. 263	54
1874	Cory v. Carter· Separate†	48 Ind. 327	53
1873	Baldwin v. Kerlin†	46 Ind. 426	53
1873	Kesler v. Myers†	41 Ind. 543	53
1874	Owens v. Lewis†	46 Ind. 488	51
1874	Fletcher v. State†	49 Ind. 124	50
1871	State v. Gibson†	36 Ind. 389	50
1873	Miller v. Billingsly†	41 Ind. 489	49

Showing the 15 most-cited of 391 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 Samuel H. Buskirk on?: Samuel H. Buskirk 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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5 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).