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 1889 / Served to 1895

Silas D. Coffey

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Silas D. Coffey was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana, who joined the court in 1889. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1889–1895 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1889	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Coffey authored 392 published opinions for the court (1889–1894), plus 6 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Parker v. State ex rel. Powell (113 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. 400 of these were attributed to Coffey 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
1892	Parker v. State ex rel. Powell†	133 Ind. 178	113
1892	Parvin v. Wimberg†	130 Ind. 561	95
1889	Staser v. Hogan†	120 Ind. 207	89
1893	Haskett v. Maxey†	134 Ind. 182	78
1889	State ex rel. Jameson v. Denny†	118 Ind. 382	77
1893	Woodruff v. Bowen†	136 Ind. 431	74
1890	Barber Asphalt Paving Co. v. Edgerton†	125 Ind. 455	73
1893	Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis & Chicago Railway Co. v. Grames†	136 Ind. 39	70
1894	Parker v. State†	136 Ind. 284	68
1891	Mann v. Belt Railroad & Stock Yard Co.†	128 Ind. 138	65
1892	Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus & Indianapolis Railway Co. v. Harrington†	131 Ind. 426	64
1890	Welsh v. State†	126 Ind. 71	62
1890	Renihan v. Wright	25 N.E. 822	58
1889	Boulden v. McIntire†	119 Ind. 574	57
1891	Gilson v. Board of Commissioners†	128 Ind. 65	54

Showing the 15 most-cited of 402 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 Silas D. Coffey on?: Silas D. Coffey 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).