Paige Petersen
2018 - Present
2033
7
Paige Petersen is a judge of the Utah Supreme Court. She assumed office on January 19, 2018. Her current term ends on January 2, 2033.
Petersen ran for re-election for judge of the Utah Supreme Court. She won in the retention election on November 8, 2022.
Petersen first became a member of the Utah Supreme Court when she was appointed by Gov. Gary R. Herbert (R) to replace Christine Durham.[1] Petersen was unanimously confirmed by the Utah Senate on November 15, 2017.[2] To read more about judicial selection in Utah, click here.
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country. As part of this study, we assigned each justice a Confidence Score describing our confidence in the degree of partisanship exhibited by the justices' past partisan behavior, before they joined the court.[3] Petersen received a confidence score of Indeterminate.[4] Click here to read more about this study.
Biography
Petersen received an associate degree from the College of Eastern Utah, a bachelor's degree in English and political science from the University of Utah, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.[1] Before becoming a justice on the Utah Supreme Court, Petersen was a judge of the Third Judicial District Court from 2015 to 2017. From 2012 to 2015, she worked as an assistant U.S. attorney for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Utah. She previously worked as a prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague Netherlands from 2009 to 2011. From 2003 to 2008, she worked as an assistant U.S. attorney for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.[1]
Elections
2022
See also: Utah Supreme Court elections, 2022
Utah Supreme Court, Paige Petersen's seat
Paige Petersen was retained to the Utah Supreme Court on November 8, 2022 with 82.7% of the vote.
Retention Vote |
% |
Votes |
|||
| ✔ | Yes |
82.7
|
757,044 | ||
No |
17.3
|
158,668 | |||
Total Votes |
915,712 | ||||
|
|
2017
Petersen first became a member of the Utah Supreme Court when she was appointed by Gov. Gary R. Herbert (R) to replace Christine Durham.[1] Petersen was unanimously confirmed by the Utah Senate on November 15, 2017.[2]
2015
Petersen was appointed to the Utah Third Judicial District by Gov. Herbert (R) on March 4, 2015, for a term that would expire in 2018.
Analysis
Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship (2020)
Last updated: June 15, 2020
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country as of June 15, 2020.
The study presented Confidence Scores that represented our confidence in each justice's degree of partisan affiliation. This was not a measure of where a justice fell on an ideological spectrum, but rather a measure of how much confidence we had that a justice was or had been affiliated with a political party. The scores were based on seven factors, including but not limited to party registration.[5]
The five resulting categories of Confidence Scores were:
- Strong Democrat
- Mild Democrat
- Indeterminate[6]
- Mild Republican
- Strong Republican
This justice's Confidence Score, as well as the factors contributing to that score, is presented below. The information below was current as of June 2020.
Paige
Petersen
Utah
- Partisan Confidence Score:
Indeterminate - Judicial Selection Method:
Assisted appointment through governor controlled judicial nominating commission - Key Factors:
- Donated less than $2,000 to Democratic candidates
- Appointed by a Republican governor
- State was a Republican trifecta at time of appointment
Partisan Profile
Details:
Peterson was appointed in 2017 by Gov. Gary Herbert (R). At the time of her appointment, Utah was a Republican trifecta. She donated $175 to Democratic candidates.
State supreme court judicial selection in Utah
- See also: Judicial selection in Utah
The five justices of the supreme court are selected through assisted appointment. The governor selects a nominee from a list of recommended candidates from a judicial nominating commission. The nominee then must attain approval from the Utah Senate.
New appointees serve for at least three years, after which they must run in a yes-no retention election. If retained, supreme court justices serve subsequent terms of ten years.[7]
Qualifications
To serve on the Utah Supreme Court, a judge must be:
- a citizen of the United States;
- a state resident for at least five years;
- admitted to practice law in the state;
- at least 30 years old; and
- no more than 75 years old.[7]
Chief justice
The chief justice of the supreme court is selected by peer vote. The chief justice of the supreme court serves in that capacity for four years.[7]
Vacancies
When a vacancy occurs on the court, the governor appoints a replacement from a list of seven names recommended by a nominating commission. The nominee then must attain approval from the Utah Senate. New appointees serve for at least three years, after which they must run in a yes-no retention election. If retained, supreme court justices serve subsequent terms of ten years.[7]
The map below highlights how vacancies are filled in state supreme courts across the country.
See also
2022 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Utah Policy, "Gov. Herbert appoints Paige Petersen to the Utah Supreme Court," October 31, 2017 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "appoint" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ 2.0 2.1 The Salt Lake Tribune, "Paige Petersen unanimously confirmed to join Utah Supreme Court, would replace outgoing Justice Christine Durham," November 16, 2017
- ↑ We calculated confidence scores by collecting several data points such as party registration, donations, and previous political campaigns.
- ↑ The five possible confidence scores were: Strong Democrat, Mild Democrat, Indeterminate, Mild Republican, and Strong Republican.
- ↑ The seven factors were party registration, donations made to partisan candidates, donations made to political parties, donations received from political parties or bodies with clear political affiliation, participation in political campaigns, the partisanship of the body responsible for appointing the justice, and state trifecta status when the justice joined the court.
- ↑ An Indeterminate score indicates that there is either not enough information about the justice’s partisan affiliations or that our research found conflicting partisan affiliations.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 American Judicature Society, "Methods of Judicial Selection," accessed August 20, 2021
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