How do judges of the New Hampshire Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

New Hampshire Supreme Court / Joined 1986 / Served to 2000

Walter Stephen Thayer III

Justice, New Hampshire Supreme Court

Walter Stephen Thayer III was a Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1986. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1946 · age 80
Tenure: 1986–2000 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1986	New Hampshire Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Belmont Abbey College

Judicial Record

In our data, Thayer authored 365 published opinions for the court (1986–2000), plus 30 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: Roberts v. General Motors Corp. (98 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. 407 of these were attributed to Thayer 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
1994	Roberts v. General Motors Corp.†	138 N.H. 532	98
1992	State v. Vandebogart†	136 N.H. 365	75
1990	State v. Pellicci· Concurrence†	133 N.H. 523	65
1987	State v. Bujnowski†	130 N.H. 1	62
1994	State v. Vandebogart†	139 N.H. 145	60
1987	Panas v. Harakis†	129 N.H. 591	55
1995	Aranson v. Schroeder· Dissent†	140 N.H. 359	52
1999	State v. Cobb†	143 N.H. 638	50
1995	State v. Canelo· Dissent†	139 N.H. 376	50
1988	Lempke v. Dagenais†	130 N.H. 782	49
1990	Thorpe v. State†	133 N.H. 299	48
1998	State v. Mountjoy†	142 N.H. 648	46
1996	Basbanes' Case†	141 N.H. 1	46
1988	State v. Johnson†	130 N.H. 578	45
1995	Conrad v. Hazen†	140 N.H. 249	44

Showing the 15 most-cited of 408 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 New Hampshire Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Walter Stephen Thayer III on?: Walter Stephen Thayer III was a Justice of the New Hampshire 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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14 years on the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).