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 1980 / Served to 1984

Dallin Harris Oaks

Justice, Utah Supreme Court

Dallin Harris Oaks was a Justice of the Utah Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1932 · age 94
Tenure: 1980–1984 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Utah Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Chicago

Judicial Record

In our data, Oaks authored 150 published opinions for the court (1981–1984), plus 10 dissents and 20 concurrences. Most cited: Leigh Furniture and Carpet Co. v. Isom (202 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. 44 of these were attributed to Oaks 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
1982	Leigh Furniture and Carpet Co. v. Isom	657 P.2d 293	202
1982	In re J. P.†	648 P.2d 1364	149
1983	State v. Petree	659 P.2d 443	148
1983	Codianna v. Morris	660 P.2d 1101	119
1983	Nelson v. Jacobsen	669 P.2d 1207	116
1981	Myers v. McDonald	635 P.2d 84	113
1984	Wells v. Children's Aid Soc. of Utah	681 P.2d 199	87
1982	Hutchison v. Hutchison	649 P.2d 38	86
1983	State v. Norton	675 P.2d 577	84
1982	Hogge v. Hogge	649 P.2d 51	81
1984	Perry v. Pioneer Wholesale Supply Co.	681 P.2d 214	80
1984	State v. Fontana	680 P.2d 1042	74
1983	Board of Education of the Granite School District v. Salt Lake County· Concurrence†	659 P.2d 1030	66
1983	Utah Department of Administrative Services v. Public Service Commission†	658 P.2d 601	66
1981	Mulherin v. Ingersoll-Rand Co.	628 P.2d 1301	65

Showing the 15 most-cited of 180 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 Dallin Harris Oaks on?: Dallin Harris Oaks was a Justice of the Utah Supreme Court.

Sources

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

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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).