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

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

Utah Supreme Court / Joined 1943 / Served to 1963

Lester M. Wade

Justice, Utah Supreme Court

Lester M. Wade was a Justice of the Utah Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1943. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1889–1966
Tenure: 1943–1963 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1943	Utah Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Utah
University of Chicago

Judicial Record

In our data, Wade authored 513 published opinions for the court (1935–1966), plus 75 dissents and 118 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Crank (80 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. 202 of these were attributed to Wade 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
1943	State v. Crank· Concurrence	142 P.2d 178	80
1946	Walton v. Koffman Et Ux.	169 P.2d 97	63
1948	Masich v. United States Smelting, Refining & Mining Co.· Dissent	191 P.2d 612	61
1952	State v. Packard· Concurrence†	250 P.2d 561	58
1949	Greener v. Greener· Concurrence	212 P.2d 194	56
1941	State v. Erwin	120 P.2d 285	56
1956	In Re Swan's Estate	293 P.2d 682	55
1946	Big Cottonwood Tanner Ditch Co. v. Moyle· Concurrence	174 P.2d 148	55
1958	Allred v. Hinkley	328 P.2d 726	53
1958	Child v. Child· Concurrence†	332 P.2d 981	50
1954	Jacobson v. Swan	278 P.2d 294	50
1948	Petty Et Ux. v. Clark	192 P.2d 589	50
1960	Dupler v. Yates· Dissent†	351 P.2d 624	49
1952	R. J. Daum Const. Co. v. Child	247 P.2d 817	49
1950	Bingham v. BD. OF ED. OF OGDEN CITY· Dissent†	223 P.2d 423	49

Showing the 15 most-cited of 706 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 Utah Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Lester M. Wade on?: Lester M. Wade was a Justice of the Utah 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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20 years on the Utah Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).