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

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

Wyoming Supreme Court / Joined 1979 / Served to 1985

John J. Rooney

Justice, Wyoming Supreme Court

John J. Rooney was a Justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1915–1998
Tenure: 1979–1985 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	Wyoming Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Rooney authored 253 published opinions for the court (1979–1985), plus 54 dissents and 69 concurrences. Most cited: Martinez v. State (260 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. 351 of these were attributed to Rooney 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
1980	Martinez v. State†	611 P.2d 831	260
1980	McGuire v. McGuire· Dissent†	608 P.2d 1278	144
1983	McClellan v. Tottenhoff· Dissent†	666 P.2d 408	131
1981	ABC Builders, Inc. v. Phillips· Concurrence†	632 P.2d 925	129
1979	Moxley v. Laramie Builders, Inc.· Concurrence†	600 P.2d 733	124
1979	Sorenson v. State†	604 P.2d 1031	119
1979	Danculovich v. Brown†	593 P.2d 187	117
1980	Grabill v. State†	621 P.2d 802	102
1982	Chapman v. State†	638 P.2d 1280	96
1985	Mobil Coal Producing, Inc. v. Parks†	704 P.2d 702	93
1984	Jahnke v. State· Concurrence†	692 P.2d 911	90
1981	Reno Livestock Corp. v. Sun Oil Co.(Delaware)· Concurrence†	638 P.2d 147	88
1985	O'DONNELL v. City of Casper· Concurrence†	696 P.2d 1278	87
1982	Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Ass'n v. State†	645 P.2d 1163	87
1983	Caterpillar Tractor Co. v. Donahue· Dissent†	674 P.2d 1276	85

Showing the 15 most-cited of 376 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 Wyoming Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was John J. Rooney on?: John J. Rooney was a Justice of the Wyoming 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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6 years on the Wyoming Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).