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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Idaho Supreme Court / Joined 1993 / Served to 2000

Cathy Silak

Justice, Idaho Supreme Court

Cathy Silak was a Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1993. She previously served on the Idaho Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1950 · age 76
Tenure: 1993–2000 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1990	Idaho Court of Appeals	–	–
1993	Idaho Supreme Court	–	–

Education

New York University
Touro University California

Judicial Record

In our data, Silak authored 324 published opinions for the court (1990–2000), plus 27 dissents and 23 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Weaver (169 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. 117 of these were attributed to Silak 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
1995	State v. Weaver· Concurrence†	900 P.2d 196	169
1998	State v. Moore· Concurrence†	965 P.2d 174	156
1998	State v. DuValt	961 P.2d 641	110
1999	Coghlan v. Beta Theta Pi Fraternity	987 P.2d 300	104
1992	Nellsch v. State	835 P.2d 661	89
1991	State v. Beason	803 P.2d 1009	85
1997	State v. Bush	951 P.2d 1249	83
1996	State v. Julian	922 P.2d 1059	76
1995	State v. Fields· Concurrence†	908 P.2d 1211	72
1996	Miller v. Haller· Dissent†	924 P.2d 607	68
1995	Saykhamchone v. State	900 P.2d 795	68
1992	State v. Medrano	844 P.2d 1364	68
1999	Aberdeen-Springfield Canal Co. v. Peiper	982 P.2d 917	66
1994	Thomson v. Idaho Insurance Agency, Inc.	887 P.2d 1034	65
1997	Kolln v. Saint Luke's Regional Medical Center	940 P.2d 1142	64

Showing the 15 most-cited of 374 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 Idaho Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Cathy Silak on?: Cathy Silak was a Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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