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

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

Nebraska Supreme Court / Joined 1994 / Former Justice

William M. Connolly

Justice, Nebraska Supreme Court

William M. Connolly was a Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1994. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1938 · age 88
Tenure: 1994 · 32 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1994	Nebraska Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Creighton University

Judicial Record

In our data, Connolly authored 64 published opinions for the court (1995–2007), plus 29 dissents and 18 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Lotter (266 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. 88 of these were attributed to Connolly 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
1998	State v. Lotter· Concurrence†	586 N.W.2d 591	266
2000	State v. Bjorklund	604 N.W.2d 169	265
2002	Vogel v. Vogel· Dissent†	637 N.W.2d 611	216
1996	Heins v. Webster County†	552 N.W.2d 51	142
2006	State v. Iromuanya· Concurrence†	272 Neb. 178	131
2002	State v. Harris· Concurrence†	640 N.W.2d 24	131
2003	Gourley Ex Rel. Gourley v. Nebraska Methodist Health System, Inc.· Concurrence†	663 N.W.2d 43	126
1995	County of Lancaster v. State†	247 Neb. 723	115
2003	Loontjer v. Robinson†	670 N.W.2d 301	100
2006	State Ex Rel. Lemon v. Gale	272 Neb. 295	96
2003	State v. Faust†	660 N.W.2d 844	84
2006	Kanne v. Visa U.S.A. Inc.	723 N.W.2d 293	82
2004	Quality Pork International v. Rupari Food Services, Inc.· Dissent†	267 Neb. 474	82
2000	State v. El-Tabech†	610 N.W.2d 737	80
2002	McLaughlin v. McLaughlin†	647 N.W.2d 577	78

Showing the 15 most-cited of 111 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 Nebraska Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was William M. Connolly on?: William M. Connolly was a Justice of the Nebraska 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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32 years on the Nebraska Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).