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 2016 / Active

Susan M. Carney

Chief Justice, Alaska Supreme Court

Susan M. Carney is a Chief Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court, serving since 2016. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2016 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2016	Alaska Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Carney authored 40 published opinions for the court (2017–2019), plus 4 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: State v. Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest (42 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. 45 of these were attributed to Carney 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
2019	State v. Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest†	436 P.3d 984	42
2017	Alaska Airlines, Inc. v. Darrow†	403 P.3d 1116	41
2019	Downs v. Downs†	440 P.3d 294	30
2017	Hockema v. Hockema†	403 P.3d 1080	26
2018	Demetria H. v. State, Dept. of Health & Social Services, Office of Children's Services†	433 P.3d 1064	23
2018	Diego K. and Catharine K. v. State, Dept. of Health & Social Services, Office of Children's Services†	411 P.3d 622	19
2017	Kollander v. Kollander†	400 P.3d 91	13
2017	Hodari v. State, Department of Corrections†	407 P.3d 468	12
2019	Leahy v. Conant†	447 P.3d 737	11
2019	Allstate Insurance Company v. Kenick†	435 P.3d 938	11
2018	State, Dept. of Health & Social Services, Office of Children's Services v. Michelle P†	411 P.3d 576	11
2019	Steve H. v. Department of Health†	444 P.3d 109	10
2019	McCavit v. Lacher†	447 P.3d 726	9
2019	Regina C. v. Michael C.· Dissent†	440 P.3d 199	9
2018	Alaska State Commission for Human Rights v. Anderson· Dissent†	426 P.3d 956	8

Showing the 15 most-cited of 45 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 is Susan M. Carney on?: Susan M. Carney is a Chief 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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10 years on the Alaska Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-07-02. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).