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 2005 / Former Justice

Scott Bales

Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona

Scott Bales was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arizona, who joined the court in 2005. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1956 · age 70
Tenure: 2005 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2005	Supreme Court of Arizona	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Bales authored 109 published opinions for the court (2005–2019), plus 4 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: Coleman v. City of Mesa (352 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. 73 of these were attributed to Bales 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
2012	Coleman v. City of Mesa†	230 Ariz. 352	352
2007	Gipson v. Kasey	150 P.3d 228	306
2013	State of Arizona v. Christopher Mathew Payne· Concurrence†	233 Ariz. 484	304
2006	State v. Ellison	140 P.3d 899	257
2006	State v. Berger	134 P.3d 378	122
2007	State v. Tucker	160 P.3d 177	103
2009	State v. Valverde	208 P.3d 233	101
2012	State of Arizona v. Dale Shawn Hausner†	230 Ariz. 60	89
2013	State of Arizona v. Hon. butler/tyler B.†	232 Ariz. 84	81
2009	State v. Moore	213 P.3d 150	81
2010	Flagstaff Affordable Housing Ltd. Partnership v. Design Alliance, Inc.	223 P.3d 664	79
2010	State v. Gallardo	242 P.3d 159	76
2015	Diana Glazer v. State of Arizona· Concurrence†	237 Ariz. 160	75
2013	Robert Baker v. University Physicians Healthcare†	231 Ariz. 379	75
2016	State of Arizona v. Francisco L Encinas Valenzuela· Concurrence†	239 Ariz. 299	74

Showing the 15 most-cited of 122 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 Scott Bales on?: Scott Bales 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.

21 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).