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

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

Alaska Supreme Court / Joined 1972 / Served to 1975

James Martin Fitzgerald

Justice, Alaska Supreme Court

James Martin Fitzgerald was a Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1972. He earned a law degree from Willamette University in 1950. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1920–2011
Tenure: 1972–1975 · 2 yrs
Education: Willamette 1950 · Willamette

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Alaska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Willamette University	B.A.	1950
Willamette University	LL.B.	1951

Judicial Record

In our data, Fitzgerald authored 37 published opinions for the court (1973–1975), plus 2 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: McClain v. State (593 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. 41 of these were attributed to Fitzgerald 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
1974	McClain v. State†	519 P.2d 811	593
1975	Jager v. State†	537 P.2d 1100	112
1974	Scott v. State†	519 P.2d 774	61
1973	Daygee v. State· Concurrence†	514 P.2d 1159	61
1974	Thomas v. State†	522 P.2d 528	56
1974	Jefferson v. State†	527 P.2d 37	48
1974	Torres v. State†	519 P.2d 788	48
1974	Martin v. State†	517 P.2d 1389	48
1974	Torres v. State†	521 P.2d 386	46
1973	D. M. v. State†	515 P.2d 1234	43
1974	State v. Marathon Oil Company†	528 P.2d 293	42
1974	Galauska v. State†	527 P.2d 459	41
1975	State v. Spietz†	531 P.2d 521	40
1973	Morrison v. State†	516 P.2d 402	39
1973	Donnelly v. State†	516 P.2d 396	39

Showing the 15 most-cited of 41 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 Alaska Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was James Martin Fitzgerald on?: James Martin Fitzgerald was a Justice of the Alaska 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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2 years on the Alaska Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).