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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Idaho Supreme Court / Joined 1976 / Served to 1994

Stephen Bistline

Justice, Idaho Supreme Court

Stephen Bistline was a Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1921–2001
Tenure: 1976–1994 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Idaho Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Bistline authored 352 published opinions for the court (1976–2012), plus 433 dissents and 400 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Hedger (676 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. 895 of these were attributed to Bistline 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
1989	State v. Hedger· Dissent†	768 P.2d 1331	676
1992	State v. Brown· Concurrence†	825 P.2d 482	601
1988	Aragon v. State	760 P.2d 1174	552
1979	Minich v. Gem State Developers, Inc.· Concurrence†	591 P.2d 1078	436
1983	State v. Bearshield	662 P.2d 548	358
1981	State v. Hood· Dissent†	639 P.2d 9	328
1978	State v. Wolfe· Concurrence†	582 P.2d 728	302
1991	Tanner v. State, Department of Health & Welfare· Concurrence†	818 P.2d 310	288
1993	State v. Raudebaugh· Concurrence†	864 P.2d 596	270
1990	Stuart v. State· Concurrence†	801 P.2d 1216	262
1991	State v. Broadhead· Dissent†	814 P.2d 401	247
1986	Doe v. Durtschi	716 P.2d 1238	198
1991	Sanchez v. Arave· Dissent†	815 P.2d 1061	184
1979	Dinneen v. Finch	603 P.2d 575	173
1991	G&M Farms v. Funk Irrigation Co.· Concurrence†	808 P.2d 851	172

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,198 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 Idaho Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Stephen Bistline on?: Stephen Bistline was a Justice of the Idaho 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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18 years on the Idaho Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).