Rives Kistler

Rives Kistler (born 1949) is an American attorney and judge in the state of Oregon. After college and law school on the East Coast, he moved to Oregon where he worked in private practice before joining the Oregon Department of Justice. Kistler then joined the Oregon Court of Appeals before appointment to the Oregon Supreme Court in 2003.

Education Rives Kistler earned his undergraduate degree at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, earning a BA. He then earned a master's degree at the University of North Carolina before attending law school. He started service on that court on January 14, 1999, replacing R. William Riggs who had been elevated to the Oregon Supreme Court. Appointed by governor Ted Kulongoski, he won election to a full six-year term in 2004, winning 60 percent of the vote. He ran unopposed for re-election in 2010, winning a second six-year term. In addition to his judicial work, Kistler has taught state constitutional law as an adjunct professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. He is a former member and vice-chair of the Oregon Board of Bar Examiners and a former member of the National Association of Attorneys General Working Groups on criminal law, federalism, and free speech; he served as chair of the working group on free speech.

Kistler is openly gay, and at the time of his appointment was the only openly LGBTQ state supreme court justice in the United States. The second was fellow Oregonian Virginia Linder, who joined Kistler on the Oregon court in 2007. Kistler was previously one of twelve openly LGBT state supreme court justices who served in the United States.