Walter L. Carpeneti is the chief justice of the five member Alaska Supreme Court. He was appointed to the court in 1998 and in July 2009 he assumed the role of chief justice. Carpeneti graduated with an A.B. degree (with distinction) in History from Stanford University in 1967, and received a J.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970.

In addition to discussing his experience on the bench, Chief Justice Carpeneti will discuss Alaska’s unique system of merit-based selection of judges. Judicial selection is an increasingly contentious issue throughout the United States, and Alaska offers a model for preventing corruption in the judicial system. Alaska’s model was challenged in Hinger v. Carpeneti as a violation of the equal protection clause on the grounds that it denies Alaskans the right to vote for their judges.

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