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 2000 / Active

Matthew B. Durrant

Chief Justice, Utah Supreme Court

Matthew B. Durrant is a Chief Justice of the Utah Supreme Court, serving since 2000. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1925 · age 101
Tenure: Since 2000 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	Utah Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Durrant authored 330 published opinions for the court (2000–2019), plus 8 dissents and 22 concurrences. Most cited: 438 Main Street v. Easy Heat, Inc. (301 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. 168 of these were attributed to Durrant 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
2004	438 Main Street v. Easy Heat, Inc.	2004 UT 72	301
2011	Marion Energy, Inc. v. KFJ Ranch Partnership†	2011 UT 50	208
2000	State v. Litherland	2000 UT 76	207
2012	State v. Maestas†	299 P.3d 892	176
2002	State v. Hansen	2002 UT 125	136
2009	State ex rel. K.F. v. State†	201 P.3d 985	119
2009	Giusti v. Sterling Wentworth Corp.	2009 UT 2	119
2007	Pratt v. Nelson	2007 UT 41	117
2006	State v. Levin	2006 UT 50	113
2005	Russell Packard Development, Inc. v. Carson	2005 UT 14	110
2008	IHC Health Services, Inc. v. D & K MANAGEMENT, INC.	2008 UT 73	109
2003	State v. Hamilton	2003 UT 22	107
2011	J.M.W. v. T.I.Z.· Concurrence†	266 P.3d 702	105
2005	State v. Pinder	2005 UT 15	103
2000	Spackman Ex Rel. Spackman v. Board of Education	2000 UT 87	103

Showing the 15 most-cited of 360 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 is Matthew B. Durrant on?: Matthew B. Durrant is a Chief 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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26 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).