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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Idaho Supreme Court / Joined 1954 / Served to 1968

E. B. Smith

Justice, Idaho Supreme Court

E. B. Smith was a Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1954. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1897 · age 129
Tenure: 1954–1968 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1954	Idaho Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 279 published opinions for the court (1955–1988), plus 12 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Billings v. Sisters of Mercy of Idaho (108 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. 48 of these were attributed to Smith 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
1964	Billings v. Sisters of Mercy of Idaho· Dissent†	389 P.2d 224	108
1960	Merrill v. Duffy Reed Construction Co.	353 P.2d 657	102
1968	State v. Cypher	438 P.2d 904	62
1965	Otts v. Brough	409 P.2d 95	60
1959	Rich v. Williams	341 P.2d 432	60
1968	Grant Construction Co. v. Burns	443 P.2d 1005	58
1966	Lundy v. Hazen	411 P.2d 768	58
1957	State v. Davidson	309 P.2d 211	56
1964	Franklin v. State	392 P.2d 552	55
1960	State v. Anderson	352 P.2d 972	51
1959	State v. Polson	339 P.2d 510	49
1958	Hughes v. State Ex Rel. Idaho Board of Highway Directors	328 P.2d 397	49
1966	Hodge v. Borden	417 P.2d 75	46
1979	State v. Fuchs	597 P.2d 227	45
1959	State Ex Rel. Rich v. Idaho Power Co.	346 P.2d 596	45

Showing the 15 most-cited of 293 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 Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was E. B. Smith on?: E. B. Smith was a Justice of the Idaho 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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14 years on the Idaho Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).