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

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

Alaska Supreme Court / Joined 2008 / Former Justice

Daniel Edward Winfree

Justice, Alaska Supreme Court

Daniel Edward Winfree was a Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2008. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1953 · age 73
Tenure: 2008 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2008	Alaska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Stanford University
Stanford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Winfree authored 182 published opinions for the court (2008–2019), plus 26 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: Christensen v. Alaska Sales & Service, Inc. (92 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. 223 of these were attributed to Winfree 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
2014	Christensen v. Alaska Sales & Service, Inc.†	335 P.3d 514	92
2019	Robinson v. Alaska Hous. Fin. Corp.†	442 P.3d 763	89
2016	In Re the Necessity for the Hospitalization of Jacob S.†	384 P.3d 758	65
2014	Adamson v. Municipality of Anchorage†	333 P.3d 5	50
2009	In Re the Estate of Fields†	219 P.3d 995	50
2009	Keller v. French· Concurrence†	205 P.3d 299	50
2008	Mitchell v. Teck Cominco Alaska Inc.†	193 P.3d 751	49
2013	Estate of Kim Ex Rel. Alexander v. Coxe†	295 P.3d 380	46
2012	In Re the Necessity for the Hospitalization of Joan K.†	273 P.3d 594	46
2013	Gefre v. Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP†	306 P.3d 1264	44
2013	Heller v. State, Department of Revenue· Dissent†	314 P.3d 69	42
2008	Tessa M. v. State, Department of Health & Social Services, Office of Children's Services†	182 P.3d 1110	42
2009	Jaymot v. Skillings-Donat†	216 P.3d 534	41
2017	Kylie L. v. State, Dept. of Health & Social Services, Office of Children's Services†	407 P.3d 442	35
2010	Wee v. Eggener†	225 P.3d 1120	35

Showing the 15 most-cited of 223 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 Alaska Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Daniel Edward Winfree on?: Daniel Edward Winfree was a Justice of the Alaska 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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18 years on the Alaska Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).