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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Idaho Supreme Court / Joined 1959 / Served to 1982

Joseph J. McFadden

Justice, Idaho Supreme Court

Joseph J. McFadden was a Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1959. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1916–1991
Tenure: 1959–1982 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1959	Idaho Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McFadden authored 529 published opinions for the court (1960–1988), plus 61 dissents and 27 concurrences. Most cited: Minich v. Gem State Developers, Inc. (436 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. 158 of these were attributed to McFadden 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
1979	Minich v. Gem State Developers, Inc.	591 P.2d 1078	436
1982	Anderson v. Ethington	651 P.2d 923	169
1981	State v. Osborn	631 P.2d 187	167
1982	Riverside Development Co. v. Ritchie· Concurrence†	650 P.2d 657	164
1970	Smith v. State· Dissent†	473 P.2d 937	153
1974	Thompson v. Hagan· Concurrence†	523 P.2d 1365	140
1979	State v. Cotton	602 P.2d 71	139
1980	Alegria v. Payonk· Dissent†	619 P.2d 135	135
1974	Mann v. Safeway Stores, Inc.· Dissent†	518 P.2d 1194	120
1977	Jackson v. Minidoka Irrigation District	563 P.2d 54	111
1975	State v. Tucker	539 P.2d 556	109
1969	Petricevich v. Salmon River Canal Company	452 P.2d 362	101
1982	Rueth v. State	644 P.2d 1333	98
1982	Moss v. Mid-American Fire & Marine Insurance· Dissent†	647 P.2d 754	95
1973	State v. Beason	506 P.2d 1340	95

Showing the 15 most-cited of 619 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 Idaho Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Joseph J. McFadden on?: Joseph J. McFadden was a Justice of the Idaho 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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22 years on the Idaho Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).