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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Nevada / Joined 1982 / Served to 1997

Thomas L. Steffen

Justice, Supreme Court of Nevada

Thomas L. Steffen was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Nevada, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1930 · age 96
Tenure: 1982–1997 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Supreme Court of Nevada	–	–

Education

George Washington University

Judicial Record

In our data, Steffen authored 88 published opinions for the court (1982–1997), plus 57 dissents and 30 concurrences. Most cited: State Bar of Nevada v. Claiborne (273 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. 105 of these were attributed to Steffen 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
1988	State Bar of Nevada v. Claiborne	756 P.2d 464	273
1985	Petrocelli v. State	692 P.2d 503	199
1991	Perez v. Las Vegas Medical Center· Dissent†	805 P.2d 589	123
1990	Petersen v. Bruen	792 P.2d 18	120
1991	D'Angelo v. Gardner· Dissent†	819 P.2d 206	113
1991	Lord v. State· Concurrence†	806 P.2d 548	109
1989	Miller v. State	779 P.2d 87	100
1991	Falline v. GNLV CORP.	823 P.2d 888	97
1996	Evans v. State	926 P.2d 265	71
1996	Doyle v. State· Concurrence†	921 P.2d 901	71
1996	Guaranty National Insurance v. Potter	912 P.2d 267	71
1985	Summitt v. State· Concurrence†	697 P.2d 1374	65
1993	State Industrial Insurance System v. United Exposition Services Co.· Dissent†	846 P.2d 294	62
1990	Howard v. State· Concurrence†	800 P.2d 175	61
1983	Southwest Gas Corp. v. Ahmad· Dissent†	668 P.2d 261	59

Showing the 15 most-cited of 176 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 Nevada reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Thomas L. Steffen on?: Thomas L. Steffen was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Nevada.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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15 years on the Supreme Court of Nevada. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).