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

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Nebraska Supreme Court / Joined 1937 / Served to 1965

Frederick W. Messmore

Justice, Nebraska Supreme Court

Frederick W. Messmore was a Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1937. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1890–1969
Tenure: 1937–1965 · 28 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1937	Nebraska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Northwestern State University of Louisiana
Creighton University

Judicial Record

In our data, Messmore authored 397 published opinions for the court (1937–1964), plus 13 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Williams v. Elias (130 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. 402 of these were attributed to Messmore 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
1941	Williams v. Elias†	140 Neb. 656	130
1940	Bohmont v. Moore†	138 Neb. 784	72
1939	Anstine v. State, Department of Banking & Receivership Division†	137 Neb. 148	72
1953	Rehn v. Bingaman†	157 Neb. 467	54
1942	Axberg v. City of Lincoln· Dissent†	141 Neb. 55	54
1956	Ruehle v. Ruehle†	74 N.W.2d 689	50
1948	Hanson v. Hanson†	150 Neb. 337	45
1942	State ex rel. Ralston v. Turner†	141 Neb. 556	45
1946	State ex rel. Johnson v. Chase†	147 Neb. 758	44
1949	Clay v. Butane Gas Corp.†	151 Neb. 876	43
1954	Lakey v. Gudgel†	158 Neb. 116	42
1949	Boeche v. State†	151 Neb. 368	41
1943	Bowman v. Bowman†	143 Neb. 440	40
1939	Douglas County v. Estate of Meyers†	137 Neb. 60	36
1941	Bohmont v. Moore†	138 Neb. 907	35

Showing the 15 most-cited of 417 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 Nebraska Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Frederick W. Messmore on?: Frederick W. Messmore was a Justice of the Nebraska 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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28 years on the Nebraska Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).