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

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Supreme Court of Indiana / Joined 1977 / Served to 1990

Alfred J. Pivarnik

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Alfred J. Pivarnik was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1925–1995
Tenure: 1977–1990 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Education

Valparaiso University

Judicial Record

In our data, Pivarnik authored 994 published opinions for the court (1977–1990), plus 54 dissents and 35 concurrences. Most cited: Dague v. Piper Aircraft Corp. (233 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. 235 of these were attributed to Pivarnik 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
1981	Dague v. Piper Aircraft Corp.	418 N.E.2d 207	233
1978	Elmore v. State	382 N.E.2d 893	233
1985	Bieghler v. State	481 N.E.2d 78	201
1988	Peavler v. BD. OF COM'RS MONROE CTY.· Dissent†	528 N.E.2d 40	180
1986	Ayres v. Indian Heights Volunteer Fire Department, Inc.	493 N.E.2d 1229	176
1990	First Federal Savings Bank of Indiana v. Key Markets, Inc.	559 N.E.2d 600	168
1985	Wagner v. State	474 N.E.2d 476	162
1988	Lopez v. State	527 N.E.2d 1119	145
1984	Smith v. State· Dissent†	459 N.E.2d 355	128
1984	Burris v. State	465 N.E.2d 171	127
1980	Drollinger v. State	408 N.E.2d 1228	122
1984	Miller v. Dilts	463 N.E.2d 257	120
1989	Martinez Chavez v. State· Concurrence†	534 N.E.2d 731	114
1983	Gaboury v. Ireland Road Grace Brethren, Inc.	446 N.E.2d 1310	110
1979	Porter v. State	391 N.E.2d 801	109

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,083 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 Indiana reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Alfred J. Pivarnik on?: Alfred J. Pivarnik was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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