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 1997 / Former Justice

Kenneth C. Stephan

Justice, Nebraska Supreme Court

Kenneth C. Stephan was a Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1997. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1946 · age 80
Tenure: 1997 · 29 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1997	Nebraska Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Stephan authored 30 published opinions for the court (1997–2007), plus 16 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: Manker v. Manker (157 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. 55 of these were attributed to Stephan 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
2002	Manker v. Manker· Concurrence†	644 N.W.2d 522	157
2006	State v. Iromuanya†	272 Neb. 178	131
2002	American Family Mutual Insurance v. Hadley†	648 N.W.2d 769	90
2000	Jack v. Clinton· Concurrence†	609 N.W.2d 328	90
2003	State v. Faust· Dissent†	660 N.W.2d 844	84
2000	Snyder Ex Rel. Snyder v. Contemporary Obstetrics & Gynecology, P.C.· Concurrence†	605 N.W.2d 782	84
2004	Arthur v. Microsoft Corp.· Dissent†	676 N.W.2d 29	83
2002	In Re Interest of Destiny S.†	639 N.W.2d 400	79
2002	McLaughlin v. McLaughlin· Dissent†	647 N.W.2d 577	78
2007	Hauptman, O'Brien, Wolf & Lathrop, P.C. v. Turco†	735 N.W.2d 368	69
2002	Bowers v. Lens· Concurrence†	648 N.W.2d 294	67
1997	Giese v. Stice†	567 N.W.2d 156	66
1997	Essman v. Nebraska Law Enforcement Training Center†	252 Neb. 347	66
2004	Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Nebraska, Inc. v. Dailey· Dissent†	687 N.W.2d 689	59
2007	Trosper v. Bag 'N Save· Dissent†	273 Neb. 855	55

Showing the 15 most-cited of 55 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 Kenneth C. Stephan on?: Kenneth C. Stephan 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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29 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).