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 1959 / Served to 1975

Edward Richard Callister Jr.

Justice, Utah Supreme Court

Edward Richard Callister Jr. was a Justice of the Utah Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1959. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1917 · age 109
Tenure: 1959–1975 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1959	Utah Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Callister authored 443 published opinions for the court (1959–1974), plus 55 dissents and 25 concurrences. Most cited: Samms v. Eccles (105 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. 211 of these were attributed to Callister 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
1961	Samms v. Eccles· Dissent†	358 P.2d 344	105
1961	Charlton v. Hackett· Concurrence†	360 P.2d 176	97
1971	Lyon v. Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company	480 P.2d 739	65
1973	State v. Valdez	513 P.2d 422	63
1962	Bunnell v. Bills	368 P.2d 597	57
1968	State v. Poe	441 P.2d 512	56
1974	Cannon v. Oviatt	520 P.2d 883	55
1969	Limb v. Federated Milk Producers Association· Concurrence†	461 P.2d 290	49
1960	Dupler v. Yates	351 P.2d 624	49
1968	Christiansen v. Rees	436 P.2d 435	48
1971	Sanford v. University of Utah	488 P.2d 741	43
1969	Rice v. Granite School District	456 P.2d 159	43
1974	Lamb v. Bangart	525 P.2d 602	42
1965	Yergensen v. Ford	402 P.2d 696	41
1972	Bullfrog Marina, Inc. v. Lentz	501 P.2d 266	40

Showing the 15 most-cited of 523 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 Edward Richard Callister Jr. on?: Edward Richard Callister Jr. was a Justice of the Utah Supreme Court.

Sources

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

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16 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).