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

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

Alaska Supreme Court / Joined 1980 / Served to 1998

Allen T. Compton

Justice, Alaska Supreme Court

Allen T. Compton was a Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1938–2008
Tenure: 1980–1998 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Alaska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Kansas

Judicial Record

In our data, Compton authored 432 published opinions for the court (1981–1998), plus 95 dissents and 35 concurrences. Most cited: Zeman v. Lufthansa German Airlines (194 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. 562 of these were attributed to Compton 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
1985	Zeman v. Lufthansa German Airlines†	699 P.2d 1274	194
1991	Adamson v. University of Alaska· Concurrence†	819 P.2d 886	178
1992	Handley v. State, Department of Revenue†	838 P.2d 1231	148
1984	Alaska Pacific Assurance Co. v. Brown· Dissent†	687 P.2d 264	105
1989	Luedtke v. Nabors Alaska Drilling, Inc.†	768 P.2d 1123	99
1997	Smith v. State†	948 P.2d 473	96
1985	Pears v. State· Dissent†	698 P.2d 1198	90
1992	Wright v. State†	824 P.2d 718	89
1990	Sea Lion Corp. v. Air Logistics of Alaska, Inc.†	787 P.2d 109	85
1996	Muller v. BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc.· Dissent†	923 P.2d 783	84
1982	Rose v. Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission†	647 P.2d 154	83
1981	O'Link v. O'Link†	632 P.2d 225	83
1991	Gates v. City of Tenakee Springs†	822 P.2d 455	82
1986	Division of Corrections, Department of Health & Social Services v. Neakok†	721 P.2d 1121	81
1987	Laing v. Laing†	741 P.2d 649	77

Showing the 15 most-cited of 562 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 Alaska Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Allen T. Compton on?: Allen T. Compton was a Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court.

Sources

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

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