How do judges of the Kentucky Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Kentucky Court of Appeals / Joined 1989 / Active

Tom Emberton

Judge, Kentucky Court of Appeals

Tom Emberton is a Judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, serving since 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1989 · 37 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	Kentucky Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Emberton authored 108 published opinions for the court (1989–2004), plus 6 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Hallahan v. the Courier Journal (127 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. 74 of these were attributed to Emberton 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
2004	Hallahan v. the Courier Journal	138 S.W.3d 699	127
1993	Rigazio v. Archdiocese of Louisville	853 S.W.2d 295	91
1991	Kentucky Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Co. v. Gray	814 S.W.2d 928	54
1992	Thompson v. West American Insurance Co.†	839 S.W.2d 579	51
1992	Ashby v. City of Louisville	841 S.W.2d 184	42
2000	Halls Hardwood Floor Co. v. Stapleton	16 S.W.3d 327	41
1991	Kentucky Center for the Arts v. Handley	827 S.W.2d 697	41
1997	Ray v. Stone†	952 S.W.2d 220	36
1997	Alderman v. Bradley†	957 S.W.2d 264	33
1990	Hicks v. Commonwealth	805 S.W.2d 144	27
2004	Marksberry v. Chandler	126 S.W.3d 747	21
1996	Belcher v. Kentucky Parole Board†	917 S.W.2d 584	21
1993	Clark v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	868 S.W.2d 101	21
1991	Board of Education of Covington v. Gray	806 S.W.2d 400	21
2000	Owensboro Mercy Health System v. Payne†	24 S.W.3d 675	20

Showing the 15 most-cited of 118 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 Kentucky Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is Tom Emberton on?: Tom Emberton is a Judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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