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

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

Utah Supreme Court / Joined 1976 / Served to 1980

D Frank Wilkins

Justice, Utah Supreme Court

D Frank Wilkins was a Justice of the Utah Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1925–2006
Tenure: 1976–1980 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Utah Supreme Court	–	–

Education

George Washington University

Judicial Record

In our data, Wilkins authored 174 published opinions for the court (1976–1980), plus 40 dissents and 35 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Pierre (121 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. 138 of these were attributed to Wilkins 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
1977	State v. Pierre	572 P.2d 1338	121
1980	Management Services Corp. v. Development Associates	617 P.2d 406	113
1979	Ernest W. Hahn, Inc. v. Armco Steel Co.	601 P.2d 152	62
1980	State v. McCumber· Concurrence†	622 P.2d 353	61
1980	State v. Brown	607 P.2d 261	57
1979	Baker v. Matheson· Concurrence†	607 P.2d 233	50
1979	Celebrity Club, Inc. v. Utah Liquor Control Commission· Concurrence†	602 P.2d 689	44
1980	State v. Eagle· Concurrence†	611 P.2d 1211	42
1977	Stubbs v. Hemmert	567 P.2d 168	39
1980	State v. Hutchinson· Dissent†	624 P.2d 1116	36
1980	Berkeley Bank for Cooperatives v. Meibos· Dissent†	607 P.2d 798	35
1979	Call v. City of West Jordan· Dissent†	606 P.2d 217	35
1980	State v. Bailey	605 P.2d 765	33
1979	Lamkin v. Lynch· Concurrence†	600 P.2d 530	31
1978	Jenkins v. State· Concurrence†	585 P.2d 442	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 249 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 Utah Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was D Frank Wilkins on?: D Frank Wilkins was a Justice of the Utah 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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4 years on the Utah Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).