How do judges of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Supreme Court of Oklahoma / Joined 2004 / Former Justice

Tom Colbert

Justice, Supreme Court of Oklahoma

Tom Colbert was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, who joined the court in 2004. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1949 · age 77
Tenure: 2004 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2004	Supreme Court of Oklahoma	–	–

Education

Kentucky State University
University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus

Judicial Record

In our data, Colbert authored 100 published opinions for the court (2005–2019), plus 3 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: TORRES v. SEABOARD FOODS, LLC (112 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. 55 of these were attributed to Colbert 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
2016	TORRES v. SEABOARD FOODS, LLC· Concurrence†	2016 OK 20	112
2007	Wylie v. Chesser· Dissent†	2007 OK 81	85
2005	Parret v. UNICCO Service Co.	2005 OK 54	78
2007	In Re Initiative Petition No. 384, State Question No. 731†	2007 OK 48	75
2008	Vasek v. Board of County Commissioners	2008 OK 35	71
2016	MAXWELL v. SPRINT PCS· Concurrence†	2016 OK 41	68
2009	Miller v. David Grace, Inc.	2009 OK 49	66
2009	Wilspec Technologies, Inc. v. DunAn Holding Group Co.	2009 OK 12	65
2012	Wilson v. State ex rel. State Election Board· Concurrence†	270 P.3d 155	64
2010	State Ex Rel. Oklahoma Department of Public Safety v. Gurich	2010 OK 56	60
2016	Tiger v. Verdigris Valley Elec. Coop.†	410 P.3d 1007	59
2016	Legarde-Bober v. Oklahoma State University· Concurrence†	2016 OK 78	45
2008	Masquat v. DaimlerChrysler Corp.	2008 OK 67	43
2007	Robinson v. Oklahoma Nephrology Associates, Inc.	2007 OK 2	42
2017	Gibby v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.†	2017 OK 78	39

Showing the 15 most-cited of 111 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 Oklahoma reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Tom Colbert on?: Tom Colbert was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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