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 1933 / Served to 1957

Walter G. Thiele

Justice, Kansas Supreme Court

Walter G. Thiele was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1933. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1885–1968
Tenure: 1933–1957 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1933	Kansas Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Kansas

Judicial Record

In our data, Thiele authored 848 published opinions for the court (1933–1957), plus 38 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: Rowell v. City of Wichita (105 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. 701 of these were attributed to Thiele 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
1947	Rowell v. City of Wichita†	162 Kan. 294	105
1945	Frazier v. Cities Service Oil Co.†	159 Kan. 655	77
1935	Burden v. Gypsy Oil Co.†	141 Kan. 147	56
1934	Sponable v. Thomas†	139 Kan. 710	54
1939	Hunt v. Eddy· Dissent†	150 Kan. 1	51
1954	State Ex Rel. Fatzer v. Kansas Turnpike Authority	273 P.2d 198	50
1944	State v. Severns†	158 Kan. 453	47
1939	Elliott v. Behner· Dissent†	150 Kan. 876	47
1943	Starks Food Markets, Inc. v. El Dorado Refining Co.†	156 Kan. 577	43
1942	Cruse v. Dole†	155 Kan. 292	43
1938	Robinson v. Short†	148 Kan. 134	43
1940	Fry v. Dewees†	151 Kan. 488	41
1938	Swengel v. F. & E. Wholesale Grocery Co.†	147 Kan. 555	41
1956	Marks v. Frantz	298 P.2d 316	38
1941	Zabel v. Stewart†	153 Kan. 272	38

Showing the 15 most-cited of 895 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 Walter G. Thiele on?: Walter G. Thiele 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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23 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).