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

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

Alaska Supreme Court / Joined 1970 / Served to 1977

Robert Cecil Erwin

Justice, Alaska Supreme Court

Robert Cecil Erwin was a Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1970. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1934 · age 92
Tenure: 1970–1977 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1970	Alaska Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Erwin authored 124 published opinions for the court (1970–1977), plus 22 dissents and 26 concurrences. Most cited: Cooksey v. State (323 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. 171 of these were attributed to Erwin 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
1974	Cooksey v. State· Concurrence†	524 P.2d 1251	323
1976	Coleman v. State†	553 P.2d 40	170
1972	State v. Abbott†	498 P.2d 712	145
1972	Marks v. State†	496 P.2d 66	144
1976	Morrow v. New Moon Homes, Inc.· Concurrence†	548 P.2d 279	134
1973	Erickson v. State†	507 P.2d 508	129
1976	Isakson v. Rickey†	550 P.2d 359	128
1974	Concerned Citizens of South Kenai Peninsula v. Kenai Peninsula Borough†	527 P.2d 447	118
1974	Gilbert v. State†	526 P.2d 1131	98
1971	McCoy v. State†	491 P.2d 127	98
1973	Schade v. State· Dissent†	512 P.2d 907	94
1974	Anthony v. State· Dissent†	521 P.2d 486	93
1971	State v. Browder· Concurrence†	486 P.2d 925	93
1974	Donlun v. State†	527 P.2d 472	92
1972	Breese Ex Rel. Breese v. Smith· Concurrence†	501 P.2d 159	91

Showing the 15 most-cited of 172 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 Alaska Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Robert Cecil Erwin on?: Robert Cecil Erwin was a Justice of the Alaska 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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6 years on the Alaska Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).