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 2013 / Former Justice

Joel H. Bolger

Justice, Alaska Supreme Court

Joel H. Bolger was a Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court (5 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 2013. They previously served on the Court of Appeals of Alaska. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2013 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2008	Court of Appeals of Alaska	–	–
2013	Alaska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Iowa
University of Iowa

Judicial Record

In our data, Bolger authored 194 published opinions for the court (2008–2019), plus 13 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Richardson v. Municipality of Anchorage (79 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. 215 of these were attributed to Bolger 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
2015	Richardson v. Municipality of Anchorage†	360 P.3d 79	79
2014	Chloe v. State, Department of Health & Social Services, Office of Children's Services· Concurrence†	336 P.3d 1258	72
2019	In Re Hospitalization of Naomi B.· Concurrence†	435 P.3d 918	69
2016	City of Valdez v. State†	372 P.3d 240	44
2013	Chloe O. v. State, Department of Health & Social Services, Office of Children's Services†	309 P.3d 850	44
2013	Amy M. v. State, Department of Health & Social Services, Office of Children's Services†	320 P.3d 253	38
2014	In Re the Necessity for the Hospitalization of Gabriel C.†	324 P.3d 835	36
2017	Bob S. v. State, Department of Health & Social Services, Office of Children's Services†	400 P.3d 99	31
2015	Horne v. Touhakis†	356 P.3d 280	30
2015	Hagen v. Strobel†	353 P.3d 799	30
2015	Kinnan v. Sitka Counseling†	349 P.3d 153	29
2019	Adkins v. Collens†	444 P.3d 187	28
2012	Iyapana v. State†	284 P.3d 841	28
2018	Kessler v. Kessler†	411 P.3d 616	24
2013	Griswold v. Homer City Council†	310 P.3d 938	24

Showing the 15 most-cited of 215 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 Joel H. Bolger on?: Joel H. Bolger was a Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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13 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).