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 1961 / Served to 1978

Harry A. Spencer

Justice, Nebraska Supreme Court

Harry A. Spencer was a Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1961. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1903–2007
Tenure: 1961–1978 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1961	Nebraska Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Spencer authored 535 published opinions for the court (1961–1979), plus 96 dissents and 17 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Turner (161 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. 396 of these were attributed to Spencer 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
1971	State v. Turner†	183 N.W.2d 763	161
1977	Prendergast v. Nelson†	256 N.W.2d 657	136
1977	State v. Simants†	250 N.W.2d 881	129
1965	Stewart v. McCauley	133 N.W.2d 921	100
1976	DeLay First National Bank & Trust Co. v. Jacobson Appliance Co.†	243 N.W.2d 745	77
1966	Little v. Board of County Commissioners†	179 Neb. 655	69
1972	School District of Seward Education Ass'n v. School District†	199 N.W.2d 752	64
1974	State v. Irwin	214 N.W.2d 595	60
1973	Krueger v. Callies· Dissent†	208 N.W.2d 685	58
1978	Lautenschlager v. Lautenschlager	272 N.W.2d 40	56
1975	Vogt v. Town & Country Realty of Lincoln, Inc.	231 N.W.2d 496	56
1978	State v. Johnson· Dissent†	268 N.W.2d 85	53
1976	Farmland Service Coop, Inc. v. Klein†	244 N.W.2d 86	53
1967	Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society v. County of Gage· Dissent†	151 N.W.2d 446	52
1978	State v. Tamburano	271 N.W.2d 472	51

Showing the 15 most-cited of 648 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 Harry A. Spencer on?: Harry A. Spencer 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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17 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).