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 1903 / Served to 1935

William A. Johnston

Justice, Kansas Supreme Court

William A. Johnston was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1903. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1848–1937
Tenure: 1903–1935 · 31 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1903	Kansas Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Washburn University

Judicial Record

In our data, Johnston authored 1,752 published opinions for the court (1886–1935), plus 31 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Abercrombie v. Simmons (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. 1,782 of these were attributed to Johnston 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
1905	Abercrombie v. Simmons†	71 Kan. 538	82
1906	Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. Fajardo†	74 Kan. 314	71
1911	State v. Stewart†	85 Kan. 404	64
1906	McAllister v. Fair†	72 Kan. 533	57
1913	McDaniel v. City of Cherryvale†	91 Kan. 40	56
1911	State ex rel. Taggart v. Holcomb†	85 Kan. 178	51
1912	Sawin v. Osborn†	87 Kan. 828	50
1913	Chicago Lumber Co. v. Douglas†	89 Kan. 308	49
1929	Norman v. Consolidated Cement Co.†	127 Kan. 643	45
1914	McRoberts v. National Zinc Co.†	93 Kan. 364	41
1920	Home Lumber Co. v. Hopkins†	107 Kan. 153	40
1911	Morrow v. Bonebrake†	84 Kan. 724	40
1917	Tatlow v. Bacon†	101 Kan. 26	39
1909	Heery v. Reed†	80 Kan. 380	39
1910	State v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co.†	81 Kan. 660	38

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,791 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 A. Johnston on?: William A. Johnston 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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31 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).