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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1943 / Served to 1969

Albert R. Adair

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Albert R. Adair was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1943. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1889–1971
Tenure: 1943–1969 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1943	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Adair authored 235 published opinions for the court (1943–1967), plus 161 dissents and 113 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Ruona (64 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. 272 of these were attributed to Adair 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
1958	State v. Ruona· Concurrence†	321 P.2d 615	64
1959	State v. Greeno· Separate†	342 P.2d 1052	57
1957	Steen v. Rustad· Concurrence†	313 P.2d 1014	54
1948	Emery v. Emery	200 P.2d 251	52
1950	State Ex Rel. Bennett v. Bonner	214 P.2d 747	45
1960	Bacus v. Lake County· Concurrence†	354 P.2d 1056	43
1944	Hardenburgh v. Hardenburgh	146 P.2d 151	43
1952	State v. Bosch· Concurrence†	242 P.2d 477	42
1950	City of Missoula v. Mix· Dissent†	214 P.2d 212	42
1943	Shields v. Shields· Dissent	139 P.2d 528	42
1966	O'BRIEN v. Great Northern Railroad Company· Dissent†	421 P.2d 710	41
1954	Fraser v. Clark	273 P.2d 105	40
1948	State v. Holt· Dissent	194 P.2d 651	40
1963	Brannon v. Lewis & Clark County· Dissent†	387 P.2d 706	39
1948	State Ex Rel. Lay v. District Court, Fourth Judicial District	198 P.2d 761	39

Showing the 15 most-cited of 510 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 Montana Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Albert R. Adair on?: Albert R. Adair was a Justice of the Montana 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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26 years on the Montana Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).