How do judges of the Idaho Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Idaho Court of Appeals / Joined 1982 / Served to 1990

Donald L. Burnett Jr.

Judge, Idaho Court of Appeals

Donald L. Burnett Jr. was a Judge of the Idaho Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1946 · age 80
Tenure: 1982–1990 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Idaho Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Harvard University
Loyola University Chicago

Judicial Record

In our data, Burnett authored 341 published opinions for the court (1982–1990), plus 25 dissents and 63 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Toohill (3,704 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. 119 of these were attributed to Burnett 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	State v. Toohill	650 P.2d 707	3,704
1984	State v. Lopez	680 P.2d 869	2,660
1989	State v. Adams	772 P.2d 260	560
1989	State v. Sanchez	769 P.2d 1148	428
1988	State v. Montague	756 P.2d 1083	166
1986	Edwards v. Conchemco, Inc.	727 P.2d 1279	146
1983	State v. Urquhart	665 P.2d 1102	135
1983	State v. Stoddard	667 P.2d 272	107
1989	State v. Clark	772 P.2d 263	96
1983	Rasmussen v. Martin	659 P.2d 155	95
1984	State v. Pierce	685 P.2d 837	93
1987	Ramirez v. State	741 P.2d 374	92
1986	State v. Griffith	716 P.2d 1385	92
1982	State v. Fenley	646 P.2d 441	90
1986	Staggie v. Idaho Falls Consolidated Hospitals, Inc.	715 P.2d 1019	80

Showing the 15 most-cited of 430 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 Idaho Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Donald L. Burnett Jr. on?: Donald L. Burnett Jr. was a Judge of the Idaho Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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8 years on the Idaho Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).