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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Mississippi / Joined 1996 / Former Justice

William L. Waller Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Mississippi

William L. Waller Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi (7 judges, selected by nonpartisan election), who joined the court in 1996. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1952 · age 74
Tenure: 1996 · 29 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1996	Supreme Court of Mississippi	–	–

Education

Mississippi State University

Judicial Record

In our data, Waller authored 269 published opinions for the court (1998–2019), plus 45 dissents and 21 concurrences. Most cited: McGilberry v. State (242 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. 312 of these were attributed to Waller 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
1999	McGilberry v. State†	741 So. 2d 894	242
2009	Goff v. State· Dissent†	14 So. 3d 625	189
2010	Newell v. State†	49 So. 3d 66	187
2008	Hearn v. State†	3 So. 3d 722	137
2011	Lawson v. Honeywell International, Inc.†	75 So. 3d 1024	124
2004	Davis v. Hoss	869 So. 2d 397	110
2004	Harris v. Mississippi Valley State Univ.	873 So. 2d 970	106
2013	Little v. Mississippi Department of Transportation· Dissent†	129 So. 3d 132	90
2015	Richard Chapman v. State of Mississippi†	167 So. 3d 1170	87
2015	Ronk v. State†	172 So. 3d 1112	83
2009	Schmidt v. Catholic Diocese of Biloxi†	18 So. 3d 814	80
2010	Means v. State†	43 So. 3d 438	72
1998	Shields v. State	722 So. 2d 584	68
2011	Bluewater Logistics, LLC v. Williford· Concurrence†	55 So. 3d 148	64
2014	William T. Brantley v. City of Horn Lake, Mississippi· Concurrence†	152 So. 3d 1106	61

Showing the 15 most-cited of 335 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 Mississippi reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was William L. Waller Jr. on?: William L. Waller Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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