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 1989 / Served to 1996

Robert J. Corcoran

Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona

Robert J. Corcoran was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arizona (7 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1989. He previously served on the Court of Appeals of Arizona. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1934 · age 92
Tenure: 1989–1996 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	Court of Appeals of Arizona	–	–
1989	Supreme Court of Arizona	–	–

Education

Iona College
Fordham University
Iona College
Fordham University

Judicial Record

In our data, Corcoran authored 177 published opinions for the court (1981–2002), plus 35 dissents and 34 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Atwood (361 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. 93 of these were attributed to Corcoran 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
1992	State v. Atwood	832 P.2d 593	361
1990	State v. Amaya-Ruiz	800 P.2d 1260	276
1993	Taylor v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance· Concurrence†	854 P.2d 1134	266
1996	State v. Spears	908 P.2d 1062	231
1983	United California Bank v. Prudential Insurance Co. of America	681 P.2d 390	213
1991	Janson v. Christensen	808 P.2d 1222	196
1995	State v. Gulbrandson	906 P.2d 579	189
1991	State v. Lavers· Concurrence†	814 P.2d 333	189
1994	State v. Ramirez	871 P.2d 237	169
1996	State v. Hyde	921 P.2d 655	167
1994	State v. Gallegos	870 P.2d 1097	158
1996	Gemstar Ltd. v. Ernst & Young	917 P.2d 222	147
1992	State v. Brewer	826 P.2d 783	142
1990	State v. Dawson	792 P.2d 741	142
1991	State v. Greenway· Concurrence†	823 P.2d 22	139

Showing the 15 most-cited of 246 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 J. Corcoran on?: Robert J. Corcoran 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

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7 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).