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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Oregon Supreme Court / Joined 2003 / Active

Rives Kistler

Justice, Oregon Supreme Court

Rives Kistler is a Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, serving since 2003. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1949 · age 77
Tenure: Since 2003 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	Oregon Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Williams College
Georgetown University

Judicial Record

In our data, Kistler authored 135 published opinions for the court (2003–2021), plus 19 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Ashbaugh (161 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. 117 of these were attributed to Kistler 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
2010	State v. Ashbaugh· Concurrence†	244 P.3d 360	161
2009	State v. Southard	218 P.3d 104	141
2009	State v. Parkins· Dissent†	211 P.3d 262	123
2007	State v. Ice· Dissent†	170 P.3d 1049	113
2016	Horton v. Oregon Health & Science University†	359 Or. 168	82
2015	Pereida-Alba v. Coursey†	356 Or. 654	82
2004	Stevens v. Czerniak	84 P.3d 140	82
2012	Halperin v. Pitts· Concurrence†	352 Or. 482	74
2007	State v. Shaff	175 P.3d 454	66
2017	State v. McNally· Concurrence†	361 Or. 314	65
2006	State v. Murray· Dissent†	136 P.3d 10	65
2007	State v. Bray†	160 P.3d 983	64
2009	State v. White· Concurrence†	211 P.3d 248	60
2009	White v. Jubitz Corp.· Dissent†	219 P.3d 566	58
2013	Brandrup v. Recontrust Co., N.A.· Concurrence†	353 Or. 668	57

Showing the 15 most-cited of 170 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 Oregon Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is Rives Kistler on?: Rives Kistler is a Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court.

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.

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