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 1847 / Served to 1853

Thomas L. Smith

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Thomas L. Smith was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana (5 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1847. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1805–1875
Tenure: 1847–1853 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1847	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Education

University of Pennsylvania

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 243 published opinions for the court (1847–1853). Most cited: Ross v. City of Madison (32 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. 243 of these were attributed to Smith 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
1849	Ross v. City of Madison†	1 Ind. 281	32
1848	Allen v. Lee†	1 Ind. 58	26
1851	Brower v. O'Brien†	2 Ind. 423	24
1847	Orth v. Jennings†	8 Blackf. 420	24
1847	Sloan v. State†	8 Blackf. 361	24
1851	McKinney v. Springer†	3 Ind. 59	22
1847	Kelly v. Stinson†	8 Blackf. 387	21
1851	Michigan Central Railroad v. Northern Indiana Railroad†	3 Ind. 239	20
1847	Jones v. Thomas†	8 Blackf. 428	20
1848	Brewington v. Lowe†	1 Ind. 21	19
1852	Doe v. Lanius†	3 Ind. 441	18
1852	Jarvis v. Sutton†	3 Ind. 289	15
1851	McJunkin v. McJunkin†	3 Ind. 30	14
1851	Stipp v. Brown†	2 Ind. 647	13
1847	Dunn v. Frazier†	8 Blackf. 432	13

Showing the 15 most-cited of 243 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 Thomas L. Smith on?: Thomas L. Smith 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).