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 1980 / Served to 2002

Richard C. Howe

Justice, Utah Supreme Court

Richard C. Howe was a Justice of the Utah Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1924 · age 102
Tenure: 1980–2002 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Utah Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Utah
University of Utah

Judicial Record

In our data, Howe authored 593 published opinions for the court (1980–2002), plus 112 dissents and 159 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Lafferty (244 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. 390 of these were attributed to Howe 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
1988	State v. Lafferty· Concurrence†	749 P.2d 1239	244
1998	Valcarce v. Fitzgerald· Concurrence†	961 P.2d 305	234
1987	State v. Tillman· Concurrence†	750 P.2d 546	213
1982	Leigh Furniture and Carpet Co. v. Isom· Concurrence†	657 P.2d 293	202
2002	Bailey v. Bayles· Dissent†	2002 UT 58	191
1989	Berube v. Fashion Centre, Ltd.· Concurrence†	771 P.2d 1033	181
1988	Dixie State Bank v. Bracken· Dissent†	764 P.2d 985	174
1991	State v. James· Concurrence†	819 P.2d 781	163
1991	Crookston v. Fire Insurance Exchange· Concurrence†	817 P.2d 789	162
1989	State v. Eldredge· Dissent†	773 P.2d 29	147
1992	Retherford v. AT & T Communications of the Mountain States, Inc.· Concurrence†	844 P.2d 949	135
1990	State v. Larocco· Dissent†	794 P.2d 460	135
2000	State v. Kelley	2000 UT 41	123
1994	State v. Lopez	873 P.2d 1127	119
1996	American Towers Owners Ass'n v. CCI Mechanical, Inc.	930 P.2d 1182	115

Showing the 15 most-cited of 865 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 Richard C. Howe on?: Richard C. Howe 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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22 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).