How do judges of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia / Joined 1981 / Served to 2012

Thomas E. McHugh

Justice, Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia

Thomas E. McHugh was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1936 · age 90
Tenure: 1981–2012 · 31 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia	–	–
2008	Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia	–	–

Education

West Virginia University
West Virginia University

Judicial Record

In our data, McHugh authored 560 published opinions for the court (1981–2012), plus 21 dissents and 18 concurrences. Most cited: In Re Cecil T. (2,464 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. 128 of these were attributed to McHugh 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
2011	In Re Cecil T.	717 S.E.2d 873	2,464
1993	In Re Jeffrey R.L.	435 S.E.2d 162	349
1996	Burgess v. Porterfield	469 S.E.2d 114	273
2012	Justice v. West Virginia Office Insurance Commission†	230 W. Va. 80	255
1983	Shepherdstown Volunteer Fire Dept. v. State Ex Rel. State Human Rights Commission	309 S.E.2d 342	218
1981	In the Interest of S. C.	284 S.E.2d 867	206
1997	Shaffer v. Charleston Area Medical Center, Inc.	485 S.E.2d 12	184
1986	State v. Dolin· Dissent†	347 S.E.2d 208	173
2011	State v. Kaufman	711 S.E.2d 607	163
1995	Cox v. Amick	466 S.E.2d 459	157
1986	Cook v. Heck's Inc.	342 S.E.2d 453	157
2011	State v. James	710 S.E.2d 98	153
1981	Lengyel v. Lint	280 S.E.2d 66	153
1992	TXO Production Corp. v. Alliance Resources Corp.· Concurrence†	419 S.E.2d 870	138
1988	Horace Mann Insurance v. Leeber	376 S.E.2d 581	131

Showing the 15 most-cited of 599 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 Appeals of West Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Thomas E. McHugh on?: Thomas E. McHugh was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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