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

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

Supreme Court of Oklahoma / Joined 1953 / Served to 1971

William N. Blackbird

Justice, Supreme Court of Oklahoma

William N. Blackbird was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, who joined the court in 1953. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1894–1976
Tenure: 1953–1971 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1953	Supreme Court of Oklahoma	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Blackbird authored 655 published opinions for the court (1953–1971), plus 32 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: State Ex Rel. Ogden v. Hunt (76 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. 274 of these were attributed to Blackbird 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
1955	State Ex Rel. Ogden v. Hunt	286 P.2d 1088	76
1966	Sautbine v. Keller· Dissent†	423 P.2d 447	63
1968	McVicker v. BOARD OF COUNTY COMM'RS OF COUNTY OF CADDO	442 P.2d 297	58
1963	Roberts v. Merrill· Dissent†	386 P.2d 780	45
1966	Irwin v. Irwin	416 P.2d 853	44
1960	Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company v. Jones	354 P.2d 415	42
1958	McVicker v. Horn, Robinson & Nathan	322 P.2d 410	38
1955	Rupe v. Shaw	286 P.2d 1094	38
1953	Woodrow v. Ewing	263 P.2d 167	38
1957	Garner v. Myers	318 P.2d 410	36
1957	Chickasha Cotton Oil Company v. Hancock	306 P.2d 330	35
1970	Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Co. v. Harper	468 P.2d 1014	33
1953	Dobbs v. Board of County Com'rs of Oklahoma County· Dissent†	257 P.2d 802	33
1970	Lumbermens Mutual Insurance Co., Mansfield v. Blackburn Ex Rel. Blackburn	477 P.2d 62	32
1965	JC Penney Company v. Barrientez	411 P.2d 841	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 699 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 Oklahoma reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was William N. Blackbird on?: William N. Blackbird was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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