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

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

Court of Appeals of Arizona / Joined 1979 / Served to 1981

Sandra Day O'Connor

Judge, Court of Appeals of Arizona

Sandra Day O'Connor was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Arizona, who joined the court in 1979. She earned a law degree from Stanford University in 1950. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1930–2023
Tenure: 1979–1981 · 1 yr
Education: Stanford 1950 · Stanford 1950

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	Court of Appeals of Arizona	–	–

Education

Stanford University	A.B.	1950
Stanford University	LL.B.	1952

Judicial Record

In our data, O'Connor authored 36 published opinions for the court (1980–1981). Most cited: Marriage of Bugh v. Bugh (68 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. 36 of these were attributed to O'Connor 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
1980	Marriage of Bugh v. Bugh†	608 P.2d 329	68
1981	State v. Morgan†	625 P.2d 951	36
1981	Cote v. A. J. Bayless Markets, Inc.†	626 P.2d 602	35
1980	Lewis v. Swenson†	617 P.2d 69	32
1981	State v. Blevins†	623 P.2d 853	29
1981	Franco v. Industrial Commission of Arizona†	633 P.2d 446	27
1980	Pinnacle Peak Developers v. TRW Investment Corp.†	631 P.2d 540	26
1980	Johnson v. American National Insurance†	613 P.2d 1275	25
1981	United Riggers Erectors v. Industrial Commission†	640 P.2d 189	24
1981	Western Casualty & Surety Co. v. International Spas of Arizona, Inc.†	634 P.2d 3	23
1980	Helena Chemical Co. v. Coury Bros. Ranches, Inc.†	616 P.2d 908	23
1980	State v. Miguel†	611 P.2d 125	22
1980	O'Malley Lumber Co. v. Riley†	613 P.2d 629	21
1980	Gardiner v. Arizona Department of Economic Security†	623 P.2d 33	18
1981	St. Joseph's Hospital & Medical Center v. Maricopa County†	635 P.2d 527	17

Showing the 15 most-cited of 36 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 Court of Appeals of Arizona reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Sandra Day O'Connor on?: Sandra Day O'Connor was a Judge of the Court of Appeals 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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1 year on the Court of Appeals of Arizona. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).