Supreme Court of Ohio

The Supreme Court of Ohio is the highest court of the U.S. state of Ohio and holds final authority over the interpretation of Ohio law and the Ohio Constitution. It has seven members, a chief justice and six associate justices, who are elected at large by the voters of the state for six-year terms. The court is established and authorized by Article IV of the Ohio Constitution, which also sets up the rest of the state judiciary. Its history reaches back to the original state constitution of 1802, which created it as a three-member court that held sessions in each county every year. In 1823 the legislature ordered it to meet annually in Columbus. Since 2004 it has sat in the Thomas J. Moyer Ohio Judicial Center on the east bank of the Scioto River in downtown Columbus, after earlier homes in the Ohio Statehouse and its annex and in the Rhodes State Office Tower. Florence E. Allen, who served from 1923 to 1934, was its first female justice.