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 2006 / Former Justice

Michael Heavican

Justice, Nebraska Supreme Court

Michael Heavican was a Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2006. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1947 · age 79
Tenure: 2006 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2006	Nebraska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Judicial Record

In our data, Heavican authored 615 published opinions for the court (2006–2019), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: Law Offices of Ronald J. Palagi v. Howard (546 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. 42 of these were attributed to Heavican 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
2008	Law Offices of Ronald J. Palagi v. Howard	747 N.W.2d 1	546
2018	Lombardo v. Sedlacek†	299 Neb. 400	482
2010	Aw v. Lancaster County School Dist. 0001	784 N.W.2d 907	398
2018	State v. Haynes†	299 Neb. 249	366
2008	State v. Draganescu	755 N.W.2d 57	365
2009	State v. Williams	277 Neb. 133	351
2010	Smeal Fire Apparatus Co. v. Kreikemeier	782 N.W.2d 848	342
2007	Zahl v. Zahl	273 Neb. 1043	311
2019	State v. Manjikian†	303 Neb. 100	308
2019	State v. Stubbendieck†	302 Neb. 702	306
2009	State v. Rogers	760 N.W.2d 35	290
2018	Abbott v. Sellon (In Re Estate)†	299 Neb. 596	274
2007	State v. McCulloch	742 N.W.2d 727	263
2008	State v. Mata	745 N.W.2d 229	248
2009	State v. Daly	775 N.W.2d 47	243

Showing the 15 most-cited of 616 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 Michael Heavican on?: Michael Heavican 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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20 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).