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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Idaho Supreme Court / Joined 1971 / Served to 1993

Robert E. Bakes

Justice, Idaho Supreme Court

Robert E. Bakes was a Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1932 · age 94
Tenure: 1971–1993 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	Idaho Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Bakes authored 551 published opinions for the court (1972–1993), plus 185 dissents and 223 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Hedger (676 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. 490 of these were attributed to Bakes 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
1989	State v. Hedger	768 P.2d 1331	676
1979	Minich v. Gem State Developers, Inc.· Concurrence†	591 P.2d 1078	436
1983	State v. Bearshield· Dissent†	662 P.2d 548	358
1986	Quick v. Crane· Concurrence†	727 P.2d 1187	312
1978	State v. Wolfe· Dissent†	582 P.2d 728	302
1990	Stuart v. State	801 P.2d 1216	262
1986	Doe v. Durtschi· Dissent†	716 P.2d 1238	198
1991	G&M Farms v. Funk Irrigation Co.· Concurrence†	808 P.2d 851	172
1982	Riverside Development Co. v. Ritchie	650 P.2d 657	164
1983	Cheney v. Palos Verdes Investment Corp.· Dissent†	665 P.2d 661	162
1978	Clark v. International Harvester Co.	581 P.2d 784	159
1986	White v. Unigard Mutual Insurance· Concurrence†	730 P.2d 1014	153
1992	State v. Guzman· Dissent†	842 P.2d 660	152
1979	State v. Cotton· Concurrence†	602 P.2d 71	139
1984	Stephens v. Stearns· Concurrence†	678 P.2d 41	138

Showing the 15 most-cited of 961 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 Idaho Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Robert E. Bakes on?: Robert E. Bakes was a Justice of the Idaho 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.

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