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 1975 / Served to 1993

Edmond Wayne Burke

Justice, Alaska Supreme Court

Edmond Wayne Burke was a Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1935 · age 91
Tenure: 1975–1993 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1975	Alaska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Touro University California

Judicial Record

In our data, Burke authored 461 published opinions for the court (1975–1993), plus 99 dissents and 55 concurrences. Most cited: Tesoro Alaska Petroleum Co. v. Kenai Pipe Line Co. (218 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. 615 of these were attributed to Burke 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
1987	Tesoro Alaska Petroleum Co. v. Kenai Pipe Line Co.†	746 P.2d 896	218
1978	State v. Glass· Dissent†	583 P.2d 872	208
1976	Adams v. State†	555 P.2d 235	192
1985	Stephan v. State†	711 P.2d 1156	183
1982	State v. Alex†	646 P.2d 203	130
1979	Sturm, Ruger & Co., Inc. v. Day· Dissent†	594 P.2d 38	118
1979	Caterpillar Tractor Co. v. Beck· Concurrence†	593 P.2d 871	102
1987	Brooks v. Brooks†	733 P.2d 1044	97
1980	Continental Insurance Co. v. Bayless & Roberts, Inc.†	608 P.2d 281	96
1976	Des Jardins v. State†	551 P.2d 181	94
1987	Langdon v. Champion†	745 P.2d 1371	92
1985	Pears v. State· Dissent†	698 P.2d 1198	90
1985	S.N.E. v. R.L.B.· Concurrence†	699 P.2d 875	86
1977	Jennings v. State· Dissent†	566 P.2d 1304	85
1978	Kimoktoak v. State†	584 P.2d 25	81

Showing the 15 most-cited of 616 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 Edmond Wayne Burke on?: Edmond Wayne Burke 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).