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 1945 / Served to 1948

William B. Burch

Justice, Kansas Supreme Court

William B. Burch was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court (7 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1945. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1895–1948
Tenure: 1945–1948 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1945	Kansas Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Burch authored 69 published opinions for the court (1908–1948), plus 7 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: State ex rel. Donaldson v. Hines (82 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. 74 of these were attributed to Burch 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	State ex rel. Donaldson v. Hines†	163 Kan. 300	82
1947	Kerby v. Hiesterman†	162 Kan. 490	28
1945	Waddell v. Woods†	160 Kan. 481	27
1947	Elliott v. Peters†	163 Kan. 631	25
1908	Hollingsworth v. Colthurst	96 P. 851	25
1948	Green v. Burch†	164 Kan. 348	23
1945	Palmer v. Helmer†	159 Kan. 647	23
1948	Sharpe v. Sharpe†	164 Kan. 484	20
1947	Clifford v. Eacrett· Dissent†	163 Kan. 471	20
1947	Giltner v. Stephens†	163 Kan. 37	20
1946	Hill v. Hudspeth†	161 Kan. 376	20
1946	Gray v. Hercules Powder Co.· Concurrence†	160 Kan. 767	19
1945	Householter v. Householter†	160 Kan. 614	19
1945	McCracken v. Wright†	159 Kan. 615	19
1948	Wert v. Phillips†	165 Kan. 49	18

Showing the 15 most-cited of 78 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 B. Burch on?: William B. Burch 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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3 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).