How do judges of the Utah Court of Appeals reach the bench?

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

Utah Court of Appeals / Joined 2000 / Served to 2013

William A. Thorne Jr.

Judge, Utah Court of Appeals

William A. Thorne Jr. was a Judge of the Utah Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 2000. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2000–2013 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	Utah Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Santa Clara University
Stanford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Thorne authored 295 published opinions for the court (2000–2013), plus 35 dissents and 36 concurrences. Most cited: T.M. v. State (51 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. 363 of these were attributed to Thorne 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
2001	T.M. v. State†	37 P.3d 1188	51
2004	In the Interest of J.C.†	97 P.3d 706	44
2013	State v. Davis· Concurrence†	2013 UT App 228	38
2007	Bennett v. Huish†	2007 UT App 19	33
2002	State v. Diaz†	2002 UT App 288	32
2004	Evans v. Board of County Commissioners†	97 P.3d 697	31
2006	Tolle v. Fenley· Concurrence†	2006 UT App 78	30
2010	State v. Bushman†	2010 UT App 120	28
2002	State v. Bradley· Concurrence†	2002 UT App 348	27
2004	State v. Smit· Concurrence†	2004 UT App 222	25
2001	State v. Stringham†	2001 UT App 13	23
2010	State v. Maese†	2010 UT App 106	21
2009	Leppert v. Leppert†	2009 UT App 10	21
2011	Ladd v. BOWERS TRUCKING, INC.· Dissent†	2011 UT App 355	20
2011	Davis v. Davis· Concurrence†	2011 UT App 311	20

Showing the 15 most-cited of 366 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 Utah Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was William A. Thorne Jr. on?: William A. Thorne Jr. was a Judge of the Utah Court of Appeals.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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13 years on the Utah Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).