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Per-judge retention calls inside

The ballot

Missouri's appellate judges are chosen under the Nonpartisan Court Plan — the original "Missouri Plan": a nominating commission sends the governor three names, the governor appoints, and the judge then faces the voters in a yes-or-no retention election, first after at least a year of service and then every 12 years for the Supreme Court. A majority of YES votes retains the judge. The election is November 3, 2026, and one Supreme Court judge's question appears on every Missouri ballot.

Missouri's evaluation is the model other states copy: the Missouri Judicial Performance Review Committee — lawyers, non-lawyers, and retired judges, funded by The Missouri Bar — reviews lawyer surveys, juror surveys where applicable, and each judge's written opinions, and publishes a per-judge recommendation at yourmissourijudges.org. For 2026 the committee recommended retaining all 50 judges on the ballot. That unanimity is itself a fact voters should hold alongside the per-judge record (one conservative review project makes exactly that criticism); the committee's recommendation for this judge, and his own record, are below.

Judge Paul C. Wilson

Appointed by: Governor Jay Nixon, December 2012. On the bench since: December 2012 — 13-plus years on the Supreme Court, including a term as Chief Justice, July 2021–June 2023. Previously retained in 2014 with 63.1% YES. A retained judge serves a new 12-year term, to 2038.

Before the bench (credits): Circuit judge for the 19th Judicial Circuit; assistant Missouri attorney general; private practice at Van Matre and at Sullivan & Cromwell; clerkships with a Missouri Supreme Court judge and a U.S. Court of Appeals judge; J.D. cum laude, University of Missouri. It is a complete judicial résumé — trial bench, prosecution, big-firm practice, and two clerkships — before he ever reached the court he now sits on.

Evaluation: The Missouri Judicial Performance Review Committee recommends retention for 2026 (his official evaluation page is in the sources). The committee reviewed his opinions and survey record like every other judge's; nothing in his evaluation is flagged adverse.

The record — the opinions voters argue about, both readings printed. Justice Wilson authored the 4–3 majority in Coleman v. Ashcroft (2024), which kept the citizen-initiated abortion-rights Amendment 3 on the 2024 ballot by rejecting challenges to the petition's form and single-subject compliance; Missouri voters then approved Amendment 3. Conservative retention guides score that authorship against him; a St. Louis voter guide scores it — and a ruling that a mid-decade redistricting was unconstitutional — for him. Both scorings agree on the facts: the opinion applied petition-form and single-subject doctrine to let voters decide a question that was theirs to decide. A judge who keeps an initiative on the ballot is not ruling on abortion; he is ruling on who rules on abortion, and his answer was the electorate. That is procedural judging, documented as such by friends and critics alike, and it sits in neither the misconduct column nor the activist column under any symmetric reading — the same doctrine that keeps an initiative conservatives favor on the ballot keeps this one on.

Dirt column: No misconduct, discipline, ethics finding, or evaluation reservation located in this research. The organized opposition to Wilson is ruling-based (see above) and is evaluated there.

OUR CALL

Paul C. Wilson — RETAIN.

Our standard is the same in every state in this coverage: Retain for a serviceable documented record; Do Not Retain requires proven cause — documented misconduct, proven activist judging, or an evaluation failure. Wilson carries the state's official evaluation recommendation, a former chief justiceship, and a 2014 retention verdict from Missouri voters. The case against him is one ballot-access opinion that both his critics and his supporters describe in the same factual terms; it applied initiative-petition doctrine and left the underlying question to the voters, who answered it. That is not activist judging by the symmetric test this page applies — under it, a judge who strikes an initiative off the ballot on a technicality would face the harder question. Retain.

For the complete Election 2026 breakdown — every race, claim by claim — see the full coverage on our website.

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Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Result pending. No verified call (Associated Press or official) as of November 4, 2026. This page will be updated when the race is called or certified. The original article above is unchanged.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

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