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

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

Supreme Court of Arizona / Joined 1969 / Served to 1987

Jack D.H. Hays

Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona

Jack D.H. Hays was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arizona, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1917–1995
Tenure: 1969–1987 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Supreme Court of Arizona	–	–

Education

Southern Methodist University
Southern Methodist University
Southern Methodist University
Southern Methodist University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hays authored 784 published opinions for the court (1964–1987), plus 18 dissents and 30 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Leon (1,311 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. 189 of these were attributed to Hays 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
1969	State v. Leon	451 P.2d 878	1,311
1982	Sparks v. Republic National Life Insurance	647 P.2d 1127	424
1983	State v. Chapple· Concurrence†	660 P.2d 1208	423
1984	Kenyon v. Hammer· Concurrence†	688 P.2d 961	223
1983	State v. Gillies	662 P.2d 1007	219
1982	Ryan v. State	656 P.2d 597	186
1971	Campbell v. Superior Court	479 P.2d 685	184
1984	State v. Hunter	688 P.2d 980	183
1977	State v. Knapp	562 P.2d 704	183
1982	State Ex Rel. Collins v. SUPERIOR COURT, ETC.· Concurrence†	644 P.2d 1266	181
1984	State v. Carriger	692 P.2d 991	174
1984	Daou v. Harris	678 P.2d 934	172
1977	Van Loan v. Van Loan	569 P.2d 214	164
1983	State v. Celaya	660 P.2d 849	138
1978	State v. Arnett	579 P.2d 542	132

Showing the 15 most-cited of 832 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 Arizona reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Jack D.H. Hays on?: Jack D.H. Hays was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arizona.

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