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 1907 / Served to 1915

William W. Benson

Justice, Kansas Supreme Court

William W. Benson was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1907. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1843–1916
Tenure: 1907–1915 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1907	Kansas Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Benson authored 376 published opinions for the court (1907–1915), plus 12 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Howerton v. Kansas Natural Gas Co. (54 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. 389 of these were attributed to Benson 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
1910	Howerton v. Kansas Natural Gas Co.†	81 Kan. 553	54
1914	Shade v. Ash Grove Lime & Portland Cement Co.†	93 Kan. 257	48
1914	Shade v. Ash Grove Lime & Portland Cement Co.†	92 Kan. 146	48
1914	Bales v. Wichita Midland Valley Railroad†	92 Kan. 771	40
1910	Howerton v. Kansas Natural Gas Co.†	82 Kan. 367	39
1909	Missouri Pacific Railway Co. v. Lasca†	79 Kan. 311	38
1908	Edens v. Fletcher†	79 Kan. 139	36
1914	Kemp v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Co.†	91 Kan. 477	34
1911	State ex rel. Dawson v. Sessions†	84 Kan. 856	34
1910	Laffery v. United States Gypsum Co.	111 P. 498	34
1908	Wulf v. City of Kansas City†	77 Kan. 358	34
1911	Williams v. City of Topeka†	85 Kan. 857	33
1912	Gordon v. Munn†	87 Kan. 624	32
1912	Luengene v. Consumers Light, Heat & Power Co.†	86 Kan. 866	31
1912	In re Clark†	86 Kan. 539	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 391 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 William W. Benson on?: William W. Benson 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

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

7 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).