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 1992 / Served to 2002

Thomas A. Zlaket

Justice, Supreme Court of Arizona

Thomas A. Zlaket was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arizona, who joined the court in 1992. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1941 · age 85
Tenure: 1992–2002 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1992	Supreme Court of Arizona	–	–

Education

University of Notre Dame
University of Arizona

Judicial Record

In our data, Zlaket authored 92 published opinions for the court (1992–2003), plus 14 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: Michael J. v. Arizona Department of Economic Security (680 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. 39 of these were attributed to Zlaket 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
2000	Michael J. v. Arizona Department of Economic Security· Concurrence†	995 P.2d 682	680
1997	State v. Trostle	951 P.2d 869	187
2000	State v. Hoskins· Dissent†	14 P.3d 997	180
1996	State v. Hyde· Dissent†	921 P.2d 655	167
1997	State v. Mott· Concurrence†	931 P.2d 1046	160
1998	State v. Greene· Dissent†	967 P.2d 106	158
1998	Hutcherson v. City of Phoenix	961 P.2d 449	127
1998	State v. Doerr	969 P.2d 1168	114
1996	State v. LeBlanc	924 P.2d 441	110
1994	Jett v. City of Tucson· Concurrence†	882 P.2d 426	103
1999	State v. Medina	975 P.2d 94	98
1993	State v. Landrigan	859 P.2d 111	96
1997	State v. Schackart	947 P.2d 315	94
1996	State v. Blackmore· Dissent†	925 P.2d 1347	84
1999	Kotterman v. Killian	972 P.2d 606	75

Showing the 15 most-cited of 120 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 Thomas A. Zlaket on?: Thomas A. Zlaket 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

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10 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).