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 1889 / Served to 1893

Walter Olds

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Walter Olds was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana (5 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1889. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1846–1925
Tenure: 1889–1893 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1889	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Olds authored 443 published opinions for the court (1889–1893), plus 5 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Parker v. State ex rel. Powell (113 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. 450 of these were attributed to Olds 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
1892	Parker v. State ex rel. Powell· Concurrence†	133 Ind. 178	113
1890	Penso v. McCormick†	125 Ind. 116	66
1891	Watts v. Sweeney†	127 Ind. 116	65
1891	Jamieson v. Indiana Natural Gas & Oil Co.· Dissent†	128 Ind. 555	64
1893	Siberry v. State†	133 Ind. 677	61
1890	State ex rel. Clark v. Haworth, School Trustee of Monroe School Township· Concurrence†	122 Ind. 462	50
1891	State ex rel. Worrell v. Carr†	129 Ind. 44	47
1892	Ohio & Mississippi Railway Co. v. Stein· Separate†	133 Ind. 243	45
1890	Rogers v. Phenix Insurance†	121 Ind. 570	44
1891	Brosnan v. Sweetser†	127 Ind. 1	43
1889	City of Goshen v. England†	119 Ind. 368	43
1893	Supreme Sitting of the Order of the Iron Hall v. Baker†	134 Ind. 293	39
1890	Culver v. Marks†	122 Ind. 554	39
1889	Kern v. Bridwell†	119 Ind. 226	39
1890	Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railroad v. Brunker†	128 Ind. 542	38

Showing the 15 most-cited of 452 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 Walter Olds on?: Walter Olds 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

4 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).