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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Nevada / Joined 1971 / Served to 1989

Elmer Millard Gunderson

Justice, Supreme Court of Nevada

Elmer Millard Gunderson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Nevada, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1929–2010
Tenure: 1971–1989 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	Supreme Court of Nevada	–	–

Education

Creighton University

Judicial Record

In our data, Gunderson authored 147 published opinions for the court (1971–1988), plus 62 dissents and 75 concurrences. Most cited: Maresca v. State (328 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. 166 of these were attributed to Gunderson 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	Maresca v. State	748 P.2d 3	328
1988	State Bar of Nevada v. Claiborne· Concurrence†	756 P.2d 464	273
1980	Greene v. State	612 P.2d 686	88
1979	Deutscher v. State· Concurrence†	601 P.2d 407	79
1971	Lum v. Stinnett	488 P.2d 347	74
1980	Gary v. Sheriff· Concurrence†	96 Nev. 78	69
1979	Seim v. State· Concurrence†	590 P.2d 1152	60
1975	Sheriff, Washoe County v. Smith· Concurrence†	542 P.2d 440	58
1979	Ferdie Sievers, Etc. v. Diversified Mortg.· Concurrence†	603 P.2d 270	54
1987	Leavitt v. Leisure Sports Incorporation	734 P.2d 1221	52
1975	Moser v. State· Concurrence†	544 P.2d 424	52
1976	Bails v. State· Dissent†	545 P.2d 1155	50
1988	Ainsworth v. Combined Insurance Co. of America	763 P.2d 673	49
1986	Hoopes v. Hammargren	725 P.2d 238	48
1974	Edwards v. State	524 P.2d 328	47

Showing the 15 most-cited of 284 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 Supreme Court of Nevada reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Elmer Millard Gunderson on?: Elmer Millard Gunderson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Nevada.

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 Supreme Court of Nevada. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).