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 1982 / Served to 1998

D Nick Caporale

Justice, Nebraska Supreme Court

D Nick Caporale was a Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1930 · age 96
Tenure: 1982–1998 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Nebraska Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Caporale authored 225 published opinions for the court (1980–1998), plus 65 dissents and 45 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Burlison (313 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. 261 of these were attributed to Caporale 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
1998	State v. Burlison	583 N.W.2d 31	313
1998	O'CONNOR v. Kaufman· Concurrence†	582 N.W.2d 350	282
1985	Witherspoon v. Sides Const. Co., Inc.†	362 N.W.2d 35	164
1998	State v. Jacob· Dissent†	574 N.W.2d 117	139
1990	State v. Kipf†	450 N.W.2d 397	125
1994	State v. Dean†	523 N.W.2d 681	113
1997	Koehler v. Farmers Alliance Mutual Insurance	566 N.W.2d 750	110
1998	Barnett v. Peters	574 N.W.2d 487	109
1996	State v. Mantich	543 N.W.2d 181	102
1993	State v. Williams†	503 N.W.2d 561	101
1994	Mackiewicz v. J.J. & Associates†	245 Neb. 568	95
1988	State v. Trevino†	432 N.W.2d 503	91
1995	Omaha Public Power District v. Nebraska Department of Revenue· Concurrence†	537 N.W.2d 312	86
1994	Jasa Ex Rel. Jasa v. Douglas County†	510 N.W.2d 281	83
1997	Crown Products Co. v. City of Ralston· Concurrence†	567 N.W.2d 294	82

Showing the 15 most-cited of 335 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 D Nick Caporale on?: D Nick Caporale 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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16 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).