How do judges of the Supreme Court of South Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is legislative election.

Supreme Court of South Carolina / Joined 1880 / Served to 1890

William Dunlap Simpson

Justice, Supreme Court of South Carolina

William Dunlap Simpson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, who joined the court in 1880. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1823 · age 203
Tenure: 1880–1890 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1880	Supreme Court of South Carolina	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Simpson authored 319 published opinions for the court (1880–1890), plus 15 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: State ex rel. Goodgion v. Latimer (41 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. 345 of these were attributed to Simpson 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
1887	State ex rel. Goodgion v. Latimer†	26 S.C. 208	41
1890	Lilly v. Railroad Co.†	32 S.C. 142	21
1889	Shell v. Duncan†	31 S.C. 547	19
1890	Crosland v. Rogers†	32 S.C. 130	16
1887	Bridger v. Asheville & Spartanburg R. R.†	27 S.C. 456	16
1888	Louisville Asphalt Varnish Co. v. Lorick· Dissent†	29 S.C. 533	15
1887	Joyner v. South Carolina Railway Co.†	26 S.C. 49	15
1882	Yates v. Gridley†	16 S.C. 496	14
1890	Padgett v. Cleveland· Concurrence†	33 S.C. 339	11
1888	Carraway v. Carraway†	27 S.C. 576	11
1887	Wallingford & Russell v. Columbia & Greenville Railroad†	26 S.C. 258	11
1890	National Exchange Bank v. Stelling†	32 S.C. 102	10
1889	State v. Williams†	31 S.C. 238	10
1889	Anderson v. Butler†	31 S.C. 183	10
1889	Marines v. Goblet†	31 S.C. 153	10

Showing the 15 most-cited of 346 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 South Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is legislative election.
Which court was William Dunlap Simpson on?: William Dunlap Simpson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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