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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Ohio / Joined 1973 / Served to 1984

William B. Brown

Justice, Supreme Court of Ohio

William B. Brown was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio, who joined the court in 1973. He previously served on the Ohio Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1912–1985
Tenure: 1973–1984 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1960	Ohio Court of Appeals	–	–
1973	Supreme Court of Ohio	–	–

Education

Williams College
Harvard University
Williams College
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Brown authored 122 published opinions for the court (1974–1980), plus 59 dissents and 33 concurrences. Most cited: C. E. Morris Co. v. Foley Construction Co. (4,737 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. 214 of these were attributed to Brown 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
1978	C. E. Morris Co. v. Foley Construction Co.†	54 Ohio St. 2d 279	4,737
1978	State v. Bridgeman†	55 Ohio St. 2d 261	1,353
1977	State v. Smith· Concurrence†	49 Ohio St. 2d 261	1,253
1980	State v. Jackson· Dissent†	64 Ohio St. 2d 107	791
1980	Ohio v. Freeman· Concurrence†	64 Ohio St. 2d 291	666
1976	State v. Wolery†	46 Ohio St. 2d 316	520
1980	Dupler v. Mansfield Journal Co.· Concurrence†	64 Ohio St. 2d 116	495
1977	Perales v. Nino†	52 Ohio St. 2d 89	446
1980	Brown v. Executive 200, Inc.†	64 Ohio St. 2d 250	389
1979	State v. Price†	60 Ohio St. 2d 136	353
1976	Wolfe v. Wolfe†	46 Ohio St. 2d 399	281
1977	Hawkins v. Ivy· Dissent†	50 Ohio St. 2d 114	277
1977	State v. Singer†	50 Ohio St. 2d 103	275
1980	State v. Moritz†	63 Ohio St. 2d 150	244
1978	State v. Skaggs†	53 Ohio St. 2d 162	227

Showing the 15 most-cited of 214 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 Ohio reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was William B. Brown on?: William B. Brown was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio.

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.

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