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

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

Supreme Court of Missouri / Joined 1991 / Served to 2004

William Duane Benton

Justice, Supreme Court of Missouri

William Duane Benton was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri, who joined the court in 1991. He earned a law degree from Yale University in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1950 · age 76
Tenure: 1991–2004 · 12 yrs
Education: Northwestern 1972 · Yale 1975

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Supreme Court of Missouri	–	–

Education

Northwestern University	B.A.	1972
Yale University	J.D.	1975

Judicial Record

In our data, Benton authored 67 published opinions for the court (1991–2004), plus 14 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Parker (259 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. 87 of these were attributed to Benton 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
1992	State v. Parker· Concurrence†	836 S.W.2d 930	259
1995	State v. Storey†	901 S.W.2d 886	231
1997	State v. Carson†	941 S.W.2d 518	128
1996	Rodriguez v. Suzuki Motor Corp.†	936 S.W.2d 104	123
1997	State v. Taylor†	944 S.W.2d 925	117
2000	State v. Wolfe†	13 S.W.3d 248	105
1993	Richardson v. State Highway & Transportation Commission†	863 S.W.2d 876	103
2002	State v. Anderson†	76 S.W.3d 275	102
1991	Abrams v. Ohio Pacific Express· Dissent†	819 S.W.2d 338	102
1993	Harris v. Niehaus· Concurrence†	857 S.W.2d 222	101
2002	State v. Westfall· Dissent†	75 S.W.3d 278	92
1993	Doe v. Roman Catholic Diocese of Jefferson City· Dissent†	862 S.W.2d 338	91
2004	State Ex Rel. Leonardi v. Sherry· Dissent†	137 S.W.3d 462	74
2003	Cox v. Director of Revenue†	98 S.W.3d 548	74
2003	State Ex Rel. Amrine v. Roper· Dissent†	102 S.W.3d 541	73

Showing the 15 most-cited of 87 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 Missouri reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was William Duane Benton on?: William Duane Benton was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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