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 1983 / Served to 1993

Thomas Michael Shanahan

Justice, Nebraska Supreme Court

Thomas Michael Shanahan was a Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1934–2011
Tenure: 1983–1993 · 10 yrs
Education: University of Notre Dame 1956

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Nebraska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Georgetown University
University of Notre Dame	B.A.	1956

Judicial Record

In our data, Shanahan authored 62 published opinions for the court (1983–1993), plus 57 dissents and 38 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Irish (199 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. 157 of these were attributed to Shanahan 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
1986	State v. Irish· Dissent†	394 N.W.2d 879	199
1987	Mendoza v. Omaha Meat Processors†	408 N.W.2d 280	169
1987	In Re Interest of JS†	417 N.W.2d 147	142
1987	State v. Copple†	401 N.W.2d 141	120
1991	State v. Groves· Concurrence†	477 N.W.2d 789	117
1985	Sorensen v. Lower Niobrara Natural Resources District†	376 N.W.2d 539	108
1991	Nebraska State Bar Foundation v. Lancaster County Board of Equalization†	465 N.W.2d 111	101
1991	State Ex Rel. Spire v. Conway· Dissent†	472 N.W.2d 403	100
1989	Burns v. Veterans of Foreign Wars†	438 N.W.2d 485	96
1984	Gerber v. Gerber· Dissent†	353 N.W.2d 4	96
1992	State v. Garza†	487 N.W.2d 551	94
1990	Kracl v. Loseke†	461 N.W.2d 67	93
1989	State v. Vejvoda†	438 N.W.2d 461	89
1983	Sacchi v. Blodig†	341 N.W.2d 326	85
1991	State v. Haynie· Concurrence†	239 Neb. 478	75

Showing the 15 most-cited of 157 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 Thomas Michael Shanahan on?: Thomas Michael Shanahan 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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10 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).