How do judges of the Supreme Court of South Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is legislative election.

Supreme Court of South Carolina / Joined 1961 / Served to 1975

Thomas P. Bussey

Justice, Supreme Court of South Carolina

Thomas P. Bussey was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, who joined the court in 1961. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1905 · age 121
Tenure: 1961–1975 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1961	Supreme Court of South Carolina	–	–

Education

Citadel Military College of South Carolina

Judicial Record

In our data, Bussey authored 328 published opinions for the court (1962–1975), plus 84 dissents and 18 concurrences. Most cited: White v. State (141 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. 175 of these were attributed to Bussey 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
1974	White v. State	208 S.E.2d 35	141
1975	Torrington Co. v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co.· Dissent†	216 S.E.2d 547	62
1967	Powers v. Temple	156 S.E.2d 759	61
1975	State v. Durden· Concurrence†	212 S.E.2d 587	56
1962	Bruce v. Blalock· Dissent†	127 S.E.2d 439	56
1975	State v. Sachs· Concurrence†	216 S.E.2d 501	52
1968	Stone v. Bethea· Concurrence†	161 S.E.2d 171	51
1965	Douglas v. Spartan Mills, Startex Division	140 S.E.2d 173	47
1965	Parrott v. Plowden Motor Co.· Dissent†	143 S.E.2d 607	46
1973	Cooper v. McDevitt & Street Co.· Dissent†	196 S.E.2d 833	44
1975	Truesdale v. South Carolina Highway Department	213 S.E.2d 740	43
1974	Knight v. Salisbury· Dissent†	206 S.E.2d 875	41
1970	South Carolina State Highway Department v. Wilson	175 S.E.2d 391	41
1966	Sams v. Sams	148 S.E.2d 154	39
1974	State v. Pierce	207 S.E.2d 414	38

Showing the 15 most-cited of 430 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 South Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is legislative election.
Which court was Thomas P. Bussey on?: Thomas P. Bussey was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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