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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Idaho Supreme Court / Joined 1999 / Served to 2004

Wayne L. Kidwell

Justice, Idaho Supreme Court

Wayne L. Kidwell was a Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1999. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1938 · age 88
Tenure: 1999–2004 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1999	Idaho Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Idaho

Judicial Record

In our data, Kidwell authored 146 published opinions for the court (1999–2005), plus 32 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: Charboneau v. State (356 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. 63 of these were attributed to Kidwell 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
2004	Charboneau v. State· Dissent†	102 P.3d 1108	356
2002	Infanger v. City of Salmon· Dissent†	44 P.3d 1100	106
2000	Perry v. Magic Valley Regional Medical Center	995 P.2d 816	102
2002	Dulaney v. St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center· Dissent†	45 P.3d 816	90
2003	State v. Hansen	69 P.3d 1052	85
2002	Young v. City of Ketchum· Dissent†	44 P.3d 1157	83
2003	Edmondson v. Shearer Lumber Products· Dissent†	75 P.3d 733	79
2003	Robison v. Bateman-Hall, Inc.· Dissent†	76 P.3d 951	78
2004	Smith v. Mitton	104 P.3d 367	74
2002	Thomson v. City of Lewiston· Concurrence†	50 P.3d 488	74
1999	McKinney v. State	992 P.2d 144	74
2004	Sun Valley Potato Growers, Inc. v. Texas Refinery Corp.	86 P.3d 475	70
2003	McPheters v. Maile	64 P.3d 317	68
1999	Bouten Construction Co. v. H.F. Magnuson Co.	992 P.2d 751	66
2003	State v. Korsen· Dissent†	69 P.3d 126	65

Showing the 15 most-cited of 194 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 Idaho Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Wayne L. Kidwell on?: Wayne L. Kidwell was a Justice of the Idaho 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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5 years on the Idaho Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).