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 1995 / Served to 2012

John Melvin Gerrard

Justice, Nebraska Supreme Court

John Melvin Gerrard was a Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1953 · age 73
Tenure: 1995–2012 · 16 yrs
Education: Nebraska Wesleyan 1976

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Nebraska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of the Pacific
Nebraska Wesleyan University	B.S.	1976
University of Arizona	M.P.A.	1977

Judicial Record

In our data, Gerrard authored 29 published opinions for the court (1995–2007), plus 17 dissents and 29 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Lotter (266 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. 75 of these were attributed to Gerrard 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
1998	State v. Lotter· Concurrence†	586 N.W.2d 591	266
2006	Blinn v. Beatrice Community Hospital & Health Center, Inc.†	708 N.W.2d 235	191
2000	Brown v. Brown†	621 N.W.2d 70	132
2002	State v. Harris†	640 N.W.2d 24	131
2003	Gourley Ex Rel. Gourley v. Nebraska Methodist Health System, Inc.· Concurrence†	663 N.W.2d 43	126
2005	Gary's Implement, Inc. v. Bridgeport Tractor Parts, Inc.· Dissent†	702 N.W.2d 355	86
1996	State v. White· Dissent†	543 N.W.2d 725	82
2000	State v. El-Tabech· Concurrence†	610 N.W.2d 737	80
2003	Estate of McElwee v. Omaha Transit Authority· Concurrence†	664 N.W.2d 461	78
1997	Sid Dillon Chevrolet-Oldsmobile-Pontiac, Inc. v. Sullivan†	559 N.W.2d 740	78
2001	Holmes v. Crossroads Joint Venture†	629 N.W.2d 511	75
1996	State v. Hansen· Dissent†	542 N.W.2d 424	75
1996	Reavis v. Solminski· Concurrence†	551 N.W.2d 528	72
2007	Hauptman, O'Brien, Wolf & Lathrop, P.C. v. Turco· Concurrence†	735 N.W.2d 368	69
1998	Tapp v. Blackmore Ranch, Inc.· Concurrence†	575 N.W.2d 341	69

Showing the 15 most-cited of 75 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 John Melvin Gerrard on?: John Melvin Gerrard 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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16 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).