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

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

Supreme Court of Arizona / Joined 1949 / Served to 1961

Marlin T. Phelps

Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona

Marlin T. Phelps was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arizona, who joined the court in 1949. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1881–1964
Tenure: 1949–1961 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1949	Supreme Court of Arizona	–	–

Education

Vanderbilt University

Judicial Record

In our data, Phelps authored 317 published opinions for the court (1925–1963), plus 30 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Thelberg (95 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. 86 of these were attributed to Phelps 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
1960	State v. Thelberg	350 P.2d 988	95
1952	Mathews v. Pyle	251 P.2d 893	81
1955	Southwest Engineering Co. v. Ernst· Dissent†	291 P.2d 764	62
1951	Ray v. Tucson Medical Center	230 P.2d 220	62
1955	Marsin v. Udall· Concurrence†	279 P.2d 721	61
1960	State Ex Rel. Morrison v. Anway· Dissent†	349 P.2d 774	60
1949	Steward v. Industrial Commission	211 P.2d 217	59
1957	Busy Bee Buffet, Inc. v. Ferrell	310 P.2d 817	57
1950	Roberts v. Spray	223 P.2d 808	57
1956	In Re the Adoption of Holman	295 P.2d 372	55
1956	Irwin v. Murphey	302 P.2d 534	54
1951	Whyte v. Industrial Commission	227 P.2d 230	51
1955	Bryan v. Southern Pacific Company· Dissent†	286 P.2d 761	50
1960	Bohmfalk v. Vaughan	357 P.2d 617	49
1960	State v. Holden· Dissent†	352 P.2d 705	48

Showing the 15 most-cited of 363 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 Supreme Court of Arizona reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Marlin T. Phelps on?: Marlin T. Phelps was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arizona.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

11 years on the Supreme Court of Arizona. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).