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

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

Alaska Supreme Court / Joined 2009 / Served to 2012

Morgan Christen

Justice, Alaska Supreme Court

Morgan Christen was a Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2009. She earned a law degree from Golden Gate University-San Francisco in 1986. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1961 · age 65
Tenure: 2009–2012 · 2 yrs
Education: Golden Gate-San Francisco 1986

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2009	Alaska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Stanford University
University of California-Berkeley
Golden Gate University-San Francisco	J.D.	1986

Judicial Record

In our data, Christen authored 53 published opinions for the court (2009–2012), plus 8 dissents. Most cited: Christina J. v. State, Department of Health & Social Services (127 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. 61 of these were attributed to Christen 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
2011	Christina J. v. State, Department of Health & Social Services†	254 P.3d 1095	127
2009	Jon S. v. State, Department of Health & Social Services, Office of Children's Services· Dissent†	212 P.3d 756	105
2010	Barnett v. Barnett†	238 P.3d 594	52
2011	Shea v. State, Department of Administration, Division of Retirement & Benefits†	267 P.3d 624	43
2010	RODERER v. Dash†	233 P.3d 1101	42
2010	Kent v. v. State, Department of Health & Social Services†	233 P.3d 597	41
2009	Peterson v. Swarthout†	214 P.3d 332	41
2011	Mendel-Gleason v. Harris†	261 P.3d 397	38
2012	Stephanie F. v. George C.†	270 P.3d 737	36
2010	Osterkamp v. Stiles†	235 P.3d 178	35
2012	Doe v. State, Department of Health & Social Services, Office of Children's Services†	272 P.3d 1014	33
2009	State v. Jacob†	214 P.3d 353	33
2011	Nelson v. Municipality of Anchorage†	267 P.3d 636	32
2011	Azimi v. Johns†	254 P.3d 1054	30
2011	Stevens v. Stevens· Dissent†	265 P.3d 279	28

Showing the 15 most-cited of 61 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 Alaska Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Morgan Christen on?: Morgan Christen was a Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court.

Sources

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

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