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 1930 / Served to 1956

William A. Smith

Justice, Kansas Supreme Court

William A. Smith was a Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1930. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1888 · age 138
Tenure: 1930–1956 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1930	Kansas Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 978 published opinions for the court (1907–2011), plus 50 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Lessley v. Kansas Power & Light Co. (54 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. 877 of these were attributed to Smith 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
1951	Lessley v. Kansas Power & Light Co.· Dissent†	231 P.2d 239	54
1939	Elliott v. Behner†	150 Kan. 876	47
1947	State v. Seward†	163 Kan. 136	42
1948	Emigh v. Andrews· Dissent†	164 Kan. 732	41
1952	Hammargren v. Montgomery Ward & Co.	241 P.2d 1192	34
1951	Kitchener v. Williams	236 P.2d 64	34
1933	Richardson v. National Refining Co.†	136 Kan. 724	33
1953	State ex rel. Fatzer v. Kansas Armory Board†	174 Kan. 369	30
1947	State ex rel. Mitchell v. State Highway Commission· Dissent†	163 Kan. 187	30
1943	Shively v. Burr†	157 Kan. 336	30
1942	Dixon v. Fluker†	155 Kan. 399	30
1936	Crowe v. Moore†	144 Kan. 794	30
1952	Modlin v. Consumers Cooperative Ass'n.· Dissent†	241 P.2d 692	29
1941	City of Cheeryvale v. Wilson†	153 Kan. 505	29
1942	Schroeder v. American National Bank†	154 Kan. 721	27

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,035 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. Smith on?: William A. Smith 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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25 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).