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

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

Court of Appeals of Arizona / Joined 1989 / Served to 2006

Jefferson L. Lankford

Judge, Court of Appeals of Arizona

Jefferson L. Lankford was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Arizona, who joined the court in 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1951 · age 75
Tenure: 1989–2006 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	Court of Appeals of Arizona	–	–

Education

University of Kentucky
University of Virginia-Main Campus

Judicial Record

In our data, Lankford authored 167 published opinions for the court (1990–2006), plus 12 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Brown v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. (120 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. 62 of these were attributed to Lankford 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
1999	Brown v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co.	977 P.2d 807	120
2005	State v. Pena	104 P.3d 873	119
1995	Mintz v. Bell Atlantic Systems Leasing International, Inc.· Dissent†	905 P.2d 559	116
1997	Phoenix Newspapers, Inc. v. Department of Corrections	934 P.2d 801	99
1990	United Bank of Arizona v. Allyn	805 P.2d 1012	82
1990	Havasu Heights Ranch & Development Corp. v. Desert Valley Wood Products, Inc.	807 P.2d 1119	79
1992	State Ex Rel. Romley v. Superior Court· Concurrence†	836 P.2d 445	78
1992	Ness v. Western Security Life Insurance	851 P.2d 122	65
2006	State v. Munninger· Concurrence†	142 P.3d 701	63
1998	Marriage of Gerow v. Covill	960 P.2d 55	61
1993	AROK Construction Co. v. Indian Construction Services	848 P.2d 870	61
1994	Gonzalez v. Satrustegui	870 P.2d 1188	60
1993	State v. Richardson	857 P.2d 388	59
1991	State v. Iniguez	821 P.2d 194	51
2004	Merlina v. Jejna	90 P.3d 202	48

Showing the 15 most-cited of 186 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 Court of Appeals of Arizona reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Jefferson L. Lankford on?: Jefferson L. Lankford was a Judge of the Court of Appeals 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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16 years on the Court of Appeals of Arizona. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).