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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Oregon Supreme Court / Joined 1977 / Served to 1988

University of California-Berkeley Lent

Justice, Oregon Supreme Court

University of California-Berkeley Lent was a Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1921–2007
Tenure: 1977–1988 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Oregon Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Reed College
Willamette University

Judicial Record

In our data, Lent authored 242 published opinions for the court (1977–1988), plus 39 dissents and 47 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Owens (434 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. 197 of these were attributed to Lent 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. Owens· Dissent†	729 P.2d 524	434
1982	State v. Caraher· Dissent†	653 P.2d 942	274
1978	State v. Warner	585 P.2d 681	244
1977	In Re the Dissolution of the Marriage of Grove	571 P.2d 477	223
1988	State v. Campbell†	759 P.2d 1040	212
1981	Hall v. May Department Stores Co.· Concurrence†	637 P.2d 126	203
1987	State v. Tanner	745 P.2d 757	194
1984	Brown v. J. C. Penney Co.	688 P.2d 811	187
1982	Norwest v. Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital	652 P.2d 318	170
1987	State v. Hansen	743 P.2d 157	156
1984	Planned Parenthood Ass'n v. Department of Human Resources	687 P.2d 785	150
1977	In Re the Dissolution of the Marriage of Grove	572 P.2d 1320	150
1981	State v. Newton· Dissent†	636 P.2d 393	146
1978	Fifth Avenue Corp. v. WASHINGTON COUNTY, ETC.	581 P.2d 50	141
1979	Pacific Power & Light Co. v. Department of Revenue†	596 P.2d 912	129

Showing the 15 most-cited of 328 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 Oregon Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was University of California-Berkeley Lent on?: University of California-Berkeley Lent was a Justice of the Oregon 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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11 years on the Oregon Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).