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

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

Kansas Supreme Court / Joined 1983 / Served to 2003

Tyler C. Lockett

Justice, Kansas Supreme Court

Tyler C. Lockett was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1932 · age 94
Tenure: 1983–2003 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Kansas Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Washburn University
Washburn University

Judicial Record

In our data, Lockett authored 470 published opinions for the court (1983–2007), plus 29 dissents and 45 concurrences. Most cited: Ling v. Jan's Liquors (224 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. 107 of these were attributed to Lockett 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
1985	Ling v. Jan's Liquors· Concurrence†	703 P.2d 731	224
1991	Gillespie v. Seymour· Concurrence†	823 P.2d 782	203
1991	Kansas State Bank & Trust Co. v. Specialized Transportation Services, Inc.· Concurrence†	819 P.2d 587	190
1998	In Re the Marriage of Killman	955 P.2d 1228	160
1989	In Re Marriage of Ross	783 P.2d 331	155
1985	Hopkins v. State	702 P.2d 311	143
2003	State v. Davis	61 P.3d 701	140
2001	State v. Graham	30 P.3d 310	137
1990	Samsel v. Wheeler Transport Services, Inc.	789 P.2d 541	130
2006	State v. Bryan	281 Kan. 157	125
1992	Catholic Diocese of Dodge City v. Raymer	840 P.2d 456	123
1987	Farley v. Engelken· Concurrence†	740 P.2d 1058	118
1986	Memorial Hospital Ass'n, Inc. v. Knutson	722 P.2d 1093	114
1987	State v. Ruebke	731 P.2d 842	111
1987	Patrons Mutual Insurance v. Kerl Ex Rel. Harmon	732 P.2d 741	104

Showing the 15 most-cited of 544 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 Kansas Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Tyler C. Lockett on?: Tyler C. Lockett was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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