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 1959 / Served to 1970

Buell Arthur Nesbett

Justice, Alaska Supreme Court

Buell Arthur Nesbett was a Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1959. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1910–1993
Tenure: 1959–1970 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1959	Alaska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of San Francisco

Judicial Record

In our data, Nesbett authored 119 published opinions for the court (1960–1969), plus 9 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: Love v. State (340 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. 127 of these were attributed to Nesbett 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
1969	Love v. State· Dissent†	457 P.2d 622	340
1969	Grossman v. State· Concurrence†	457 P.2d 226	89
1969	Roberts v. State· Dissent†	458 P.2d 340	82
1968	Leavitt v. Gillaspie· Concurrence†	443 P.2d 61	70
1963	Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Co. v. Continental Casualty Co.	387 P.2d 104	67
1969	Clary v. Fifth Avenue Chrysler Center, Inc.†	454 P.2d 244	66
1962	DeArmond v. Alaska State Development Corporation†	376 P.2d 717	64
1962	Rogge v. Weaver†	368 P.2d 810	63
1968	Stevens v. State†	443 P.2d 600	62
1969	Fresneda v. State· Dissent†	458 P.2d 134	55
1967	Pepsi Cola Bottling Co. of Anchorage, Inc. v. Superior Burner Service Co.· Concurrence†	427 P.2d 833	53
1962	Bridges v. Alaska Housing Authority	375 P.2d 696	53
1969	Harris v. State· Concurrence†	457 P.2d 638	52
1966	West v. State†	409 P.2d 847	51
1968	Faulkner v. State· Dissent†	445 P.2d 815	49

Showing the 15 most-cited of 134 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 Buell Arthur Nesbett on?: Buell Arthur Nesbett was a Justice of the Alaska 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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10 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).