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

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

Nebraska Supreme Court / Joined 1931 / Served to 1949

Bayard H. Paine

Justice, Nebraska Supreme Court

Bayard H. Paine was a Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1931. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1872–1955
Tenure: 1931–1949 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1931	Nebraska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Northwestern State University of Louisiana
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Judicial Record

In our data, Paine authored 495 published opinions for the court (1931–1949), plus 53 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Rentschler v. Missouri Pacific Railroad (77 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. 552 of these were attributed to Paine 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
1934	Rentschler v. Missouri Pacific Railroad†	126 Neb. 493	77
1941	McArthur v. Thompson†	140 Neb. 408	59
1939	Drummond v. City of Columbus†	136 Neb. 87	53
1933	Witham v. City of Lincoln†	125 Neb. 366	46
1947	Dolen v. State†	148 Neb. 317	45
1946	Strawn v. County of Sarpy†	146 Neb. 783	43
1943	Yost v. Yost†	143 Neb. 80	42
1935	Smithberger v. Banning· Concurrence†	129 Neb. 651	42
1931	Limmerick v. State†	120 Neb. 558	38
1948	Bode v. Prettyman†	149 Neb. 179	37
1936	Steinacher v. Swanson· Dissent†	131 Neb. 439	37
1931	Frost v. Schinkel†	121 Neb. 784	37
1942	Evans v. Boney†	141 Neb. 413	36
1940	State ex rel. Hunter v. The Araho†	137 Neb. 389	36
1947	Allen v. Clark†	148 Neb. 627	34

Showing the 15 most-cited of 552 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 Nebraska Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Bayard H. Paine on?: Bayard H. Paine was a Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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