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

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

Nebraska Supreme Court / Joined 1964 / Served to 1973

Robert L. Smith

Justice, Nebraska Supreme Court

Robert L. Smith was a Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1964. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1918 · age 108
Tenure: 1964–1973 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1964	Nebraska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Southern Methodist University
Creighton University

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 130 published opinions for the court (1965–1973), plus 14 dissents and 20 concurrences. Most cited: Hawkins Construction Co. v. Matthews Co., Inc. (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. 156 of these were attributed to Smith 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
1973	Hawkins Construction Co. v. Matthews Co., Inc.· Concurrence†	209 N.W.2d 643	109
1966	Wittler v. Baumgartner· Dissent†	144 N.W.2d 62	61
1971	Kohler v. Ford Motor Company· Dissent†	191 N.W.2d 601	58
1972	Abbott v. Abbott†	195 N.W.2d 204	55
1973	State v. Stevens†	203 N.W.2d 499	38
1966	Myers v. Drozda†	141 N.W.2d 852	34
1972	Marcus v. Huffman· Concurrence†	194 N.W.2d 221	33
1967	Ready Mix, Inc. v. Nebraska Railroads of Western Trunk Lines Committee†	181 Neb. 697	29
1965	Tober v. Hampton· Dissent†	136 N.W.2d 194	28
1967	Heywood v. Brainard· Dissent†	147 N.W.2d 772	25
1967	State v. Riley· Concurrence†	154 N.W.2d 741	23
1968	Delay v. Brainard· Dissent†	156 N.W.2d 14	22
1973	Larutan Corp. v. Magnolia Homes Manufacturing Co.· Concurrence†	209 N.W.2d 177	20
1965	Brown v. City of Omaha· Dissent†	137 N.W.2d 814	20
1971	Hiram Scott College v. Insurance Co. of North America· Concurrence†	188 N.W.2d 688	16

Showing the 15 most-cited of 164 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 Nebraska Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Robert L. Smith on?: Robert L. Smith was a Justice of the Nebraska 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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9 years on the Nebraska Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).