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 2019 / Active

Shea Nickell

Justice, Supreme Court of Kentucky

Shea Nickell is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, serving since 2019. He previously served on the Kentucky Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2019 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	Kentucky Court of Appeals	–	–
2019	Supreme Court of Kentucky	–	–

Education

DePauw University

Judicial Record

In our data, Nickell authored 25 published opinions for the court (2007–2011), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Bailey v. Bailey (33 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. 22 of these were attributed to Nickell 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	Bailey v. Bailey†	231 S.W.3d 793	33
2010	Buddenberg v. Buddenberg	304 S.W.3d 717	23
2007	Davis v. Fischer Single Family Homes, Ltd.†	231 S.W.3d 767	20
2007	Green v. Owensboro Medical Health System, Inc.†	231 S.W.3d 781	17
2007	Simmons v. Commonwealth†	232 S.W.3d 531	16
2008	Hensley v. Commonwealth†	248 S.W.3d 572	12
2008	Hale v. Moore†	289 S.W.3d 567	11
2007	Bacigalupo v. Kohlhepp†	240 S.W.3d 155	10
2008	Murphy v. Murphy†	272 S.W.3d 864	9
2007	Greene v. Paschall Truck Lines†	239 S.W.3d 94	8
2008	Frank v. Estate of Enderle†	253 S.W.3d 570	5
2008	Comair, Inc. v. Helton†	270 S.W.3d 909	4
2009	Temple v. Temple	298 S.W.3d 466	3
2007	Boyle v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	245 S.W.3d 219	3
2007	Lafayette Football Boosters, Inc. v. Commonwealth†	232 S.W.3d 550	3

Showing the 15 most-cited of 26 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 is Shea Nickell on?: Shea Nickell is 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

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7 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).