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 1939 / Served to 1943

David W. Moffat

Justice, Utah Supreme Court

David W. Moffat was a Justice of the Utah Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1939. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1870–1944
Tenure: 1939–1943 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1939	Utah Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Utah
University of Chicago

Judicial Record

In our data, Moffat authored 225 published opinions for the court (1929–1944), plus 59 dissents and 58 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Mason (83 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. 4 of these were attributed to Moffat 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
1938	State v. Mason· Dissent	78 P.2d 920	83
1940	Creameries of America, Inc. v. Industrial Commission· Concurrence	102 P.2d 300	65
1936	Atwood v. Cox, District Judge· Concurrence	55 P.2d 377	58
1937	Attorney General of Utah v. Pomeroy· Dissent	73 P.2d 1277	54
1935	Lehi City v. Meiling, City Recorder· Dissent	48 P.2d 530	54
1943	Broadbent v. Gibson· Concurrence	140 P.2d 939	44
1940	Norville v. State Tax Commission· Dissent	97 P.2d 937	44
1936	Kent v. Industrial Commission	57 P.2d 724	44
1939	Keigley v. Bench, City Recorder· Concurrence	89 P.2d 480	42
1936	Fox v. Lavender· Dissent	56 P.2d 1049	41
1943	Singer Sewing MacH. Co. v. Industrial Commission· Concurrence	134 P.2d 479	40
1939	Globe Grain & Milling Co. v. Industrial Commission· Dissent	91 P.2d 512	36
1934	State v. Woolman	33 P.2d 640	36
1935	Wrathall v. Johnson	40 P.2d 755	34
1943	Morrison v. Perry· Concurrence	140 P.2d 772	33

Showing the 15 most-cited of 344 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 David W. Moffat on?: David W. Moffat 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).