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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Oregon Supreme Court / Joined 1979 / Served to 1993

Edwin J. Peterson

Justice, Oregon Supreme Court

Edwin J. Peterson was a Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1930 · age 96
Tenure: 1979–1993 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	Oregon Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Pacific University
Pacific University

Judicial Record

In our data, Peterson authored 185 published opinions for the court (1979–1993), plus 41 dissents and 60 concurrences. Most cited: Ailes v. Portland Meadows, Inc. (1,060 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. 184 of these were attributed to Peterson 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
1991	Ailes v. Portland Meadows, Inc.	823 P.2d 956	1,060
1990	Reed v. Department of Revenue· Concurrence†	798 P.2d 235	360
1982	State v. Robertson· Concurrence†	649 P.2d 569	334
1983	State v. Davis· Concurrence†	666 P.2d 802	279
1993	Nelson v. Emerald People's Utility District†	862 P.2d 1293	202
1987	State v. Tanner· Dissent†	745 P.2d 757	194
1981	State v. Quinn· Concurrence†	290 Or. 383	183
1984	State v. Atkinson	688 P.2d 832	164
1989	Sheets v. Knight†	779 P.2d 1000	155
1992	Onita Pacific Corp. v. Trustees of Bronson	843 P.2d 890	144
1988	State v. Bridewell· Concurrence†	759 P.2d 1054	131
1992	State v. Williams· Dissent†	828 P.2d 1006	125
1992	Georgetown Realty, Inc. v. Home Insurance†	831 P.2d 7	123
1983	State v. Villagran	657 P.2d 1223	122
1980	State v. Garcia· Concurrence†	605 P.2d 671	122

Showing the 15 most-cited of 286 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 Oregon Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Edwin J. Peterson on?: Edwin J. Peterson was a Justice of the Oregon 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 Oregon Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).