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

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Alaska Supreme Court / Joined 1977 / Served to 2009

Warren W. Matthews Jr.

Justice, Alaska Supreme Court

Warren W. Matthews Jr. was a Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1939 · age 87
Tenure: 1977–2009 · 31 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Alaska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Stanford University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Matthews authored 753 published opinions for the court (1977–2009), plus 159 dissents and 61 concurrences. Most cited: State v. O'Neill Investigations, Inc. (180 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. 970 of these were attributed to Matthews 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
1980	State v. O'Neill Investigations, Inc.· Dissent†	609 P.2d 520	180
1978	State v. Erickson· Concurrence†	574 P.2d 1	169
1990	Petersen v. Mutual Life Insuarance Co. of New York†	803 P.2d 406	107
1983	Mitford v. De Lasala†	666 P.2d 1000	105
1980	Mallott v. State†	608 P.2d 737	104
1989	Luedtke v. Nabors Alaska Drilling, Inc.· Concurrence†	768 P.2d 1123	99
1997	Borchgrevink v. Borchgrevink· Dissent†	941 P.2d 132	97
1997	Smith v. State· Dissent†	948 P.2d 473	96
1981	D. S. W. ex rel. R. M. W. v. Fairbanks North Star Borough School District†	628 P.2d 554	95
1979	Tobeluk Ex Rel. Tobeluk v. Lind· Concurrence†	589 P.2d 873	93
1981	Miller v. Sears†	636 P.2d 1183	91
1985	Pears v. State†	698 P.2d 1198	90
1978	North Slope Borough v. Sohio Petroleum Corp.†	585 P.2d 534	88
1991	Ogard v. Ogard†	808 P.2d 815	86
1983	State v. Ostrosky†	667 P.2d 1184	86

Showing the 15 most-cited of 973 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 Alaska Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Warren W. Matthews Jr. on?: Warren W. Matthews Jr. was a Justice of the Alaska 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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31 years on the Alaska Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).