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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Idaho Supreme Court / Joined 1965 / Served to 1971

Clay V. Spear

Justice, Idaho Supreme Court

Clay V. Spear was a Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1913 · age 113
Tenure: 1965–1971 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	Idaho Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Spear authored 120 published opinions for the court (1966–1971), plus 8 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Blaine v. Byers (119 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. 26 of these were attributed to Spear 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
1967	Blaine v. Byers	429 P.2d 397	119
1966	Bethlahmy v. Bechtel· Concurrence†	415 P.2d 698	98
1968	State v. Oldham	438 P.2d 275	78
1971	State v. McCoy	486 P.2d 247	76
1971	State v. Shepherd	486 P.2d 82	74
1967	State v. McKeehan	430 P.2d 886	64
1969	Leonardson v. Moon	451 P.2d 542	60
1967	State v. Dunn· Concurrence†	434 P.2d 88	60
1966	Big Butte Ranch, Inc. v. Grasmick	415 P.2d 48	59
1969	Doggett v. Electronics Corp. of Am., Combust. Con. Div.	454 P.2d 63	57
1968	Fawcett v. Irby· Concurrence†	436 P.2d 714	50
1969	State v. Bitz	460 P.2d 374	49
1969	Jorstad v. City of Lewiston	456 P.2d 766	45
1968	Stewart v. Arrington Construction Company	446 P.2d 895	43
1968	Hanson v. City of Idaho Falls	446 P.2d 634	43

Showing the 15 most-cited of 135 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 Clay V. Spear on?: Clay V. Spear 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

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6 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).