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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Mississippi / Joined 1989 / Served to 1991

William Joel Blass

Justice, Supreme Court of Mississippi

William Joel Blass was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi, who joined the court in 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1917–2012
Tenure: 1989–1991 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	Supreme Court of Mississippi	–	–

Education

Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

Judicial Record

In our data, Blass authored 17 published opinions for the court (1989–1990), plus 2 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: State v. Tokman (287 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. 12 of these were attributed to Blass 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
1990	State v. Tokman	564 So. 2d 1339	287
1990	Berry v. State	575 So. 2d 1	255
1989	Dennis v. State†	555 So. 2d 679	85
1990	Moore v. Sanders	558 So. 2d 1383	33
1990	Simmons v. State· Dissent†	568 So. 2d 1192	31
1990	Ewing v. Adams· Dissent†	573 So. 2d 1364	28
1990	McCoy v. Colonial Baking Co. Inc.	572 So. 2d 850	22
1990	Mississippi State Bar v. Varnado	557 So. 2d 558	11
1990	Ball v. Sloan	569 So. 2d 1177	7
1989	Miss. Jud. Performance Com'n v. Thomas	549 So. 2d 962	4
1989	Rothschild v. Hermann†	542 So. 2d 264	4
1990	Stubbs v. Wood†	573 So. 2d 734	3
1990	Pittman v. Commonwealth National Life Insurance Co.†	562 So. 2d 73	3
1990	Lowrey v. Forrest County Board of Supervisors†	559 So. 2d 1029	3
1990	Bowser v. Tootle†	556 So. 2d 1373	3

Showing the 15 most-cited of 20 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 Mississippi reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was William Joel Blass on?: William Joel Blass was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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