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 1987 / Served to 1996

Dale E. Fahrnbruch

Justice, Nebraska Supreme Court

Dale E. Fahrnbruch was a Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1987. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1925–2005
Tenure: 1987–1996 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	Nebraska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Creighton University

Judicial Record

In our data, Fahrnbruch authored 52 published opinions for the court (1979–1996), plus 10 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: Heins v. Webster County (142 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. 69 of these were attributed to Fahrnbruch 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
1996	Heins v. Webster County· Dissent†	552 N.W.2d 51	142
1990	Kracl v. Loseke· Concurrence†	461 N.W.2d 67	93
1989	Milbank Insurance v. Henry· Dissent†	441 N.W.2d 143	84
1991	Flamme v. Wolf Insurance Agency†	476 N.W.2d 802	71
1990	Millman v. County of Butler· Dissent†	458 N.W.2d 207	70
1993	Christianson v. Educational Service Unit No. 16†	501 N.W.2d 281	67
1994	Schendt v. Dewey· Dissent†	520 N.W.2d 541	61
1991	Ruwe v. Farmers Mutual United Insurance Co.†	469 N.W.2d 129	60
1989	State v. Pettit· Dissent†	445 N.W.2d 890	60
1990	State v. Yager†	461 N.W.2d 741	59
1990	State v. Plant†	461 N.W.2d 253	57
1991	State v. Nebraska Ass'n of Public Employees, Local 61†	239 Neb. 653	56
1991	MAPCO Ammonia Pipeline, Inc. v. State Board of Equalization & Assessment· Concurrence†	471 N.W.2d 734	56
1995	Cloonan v. Food-4-Less of 30th & Weber, Inc.†	529 N.W.2d 759	48
1990	Hensman v. Parsons†	458 N.W.2d 199	42

Showing the 15 most-cited of 77 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 Dale E. Fahrnbruch on?: Dale E. Fahrnbruch 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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9 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).