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

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

Supreme Court of Arizona / Joined 2010 / Former Justice

Robert M. Brutinel

Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona

Robert M. Brutinel was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arizona, who joined the court in 2010. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1958 · age 68
Tenure: 2010 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2010	Supreme Court of Arizona	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Brutinel authored 48 published opinions for the court (2011–2019), plus 1 dissent and 1 concurrence. Most cited: David Stambaugh v. Mark Killian (109 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. 43 of these were attributed to Brutinel 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
2017	David Stambaugh v. Mark Killian†	242 Ariz. 508	109
2016	State v. Travis Wade Amaral†	239 Ariz. 217	103
2015	State of Arizona v. Johnathan Ian Burns†	237 Ariz. 1	88
2014	State of Arizona v. Armando Pena, Jr.†	235 Ariz. 277	75
2013	Ralph and Carolee Thomas v. Montelucia Villas†	232 Ariz. 92	69
2017	State of Arizona v. Robert Fischer†	242 Ariz. 44	66
2014	State of Arizona Ex Rel. Montgomery v. Hrach Shilgevorkyan†	234 Ariz. 343	64
2019	State of Arizona v. James Clayton Johnson†	447 P.3d 783	60
2012	State v. Nelson	273 P.3d 632	54
2013	State of Arizona v. Efren Medina†	232 Ariz. 391	49
2011	Estate of braden/gabaldon v. State†	228 Ariz. 323	49
2019	City of Surprise v. acc/lake Pleasant†	437 P.3d 865	47
2014	State of Arizona v. Shawnte Shuree Jones†	235 Ariz. 501	41
2013	State of Arizona v. Robert Hernandez†	232 Ariz. 313	37
2015	State of Arizona v. Shawn Patrick Lynch†	238 Ariz. 84	35

Showing the 15 most-cited of 50 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 Supreme Court of Arizona reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Robert M. Brutinel on?: Robert M. Brutinel was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arizona.

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.

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