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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 2010 / Served to 2011

Alton Davis

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

Alton Davis was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2010. He previously served on the Michigan Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2010–2011

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2005	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–
2010	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Davis authored 84 published opinions for the court (2005–2010), plus 8 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Hill v. City of Warren (95 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. 54 of these were attributed to Davis 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
2007	Hill v. City of Warren†	740 N.W.2d 706	95
2009	People v. MESIK (ON RECON.)†	775 N.W.2d 857	78
2007	Chapin v. a & L PARTS, INC.†	732 N.W.2d 578	78
2010	2000 Baum Family Trust v. Babel· Dissent†	488 Mich. 136	75
2007	People v. Williams†	737 N.W.2d 797	72
2007	People v. Gubachy†	728 N.W.2d 891	55
2008	Kimmelman v. Heather Downs Management Limited†	753 N.W.2d 265	54
2007	Richardson v. Rockwood Center, LLC· Dissent†	737 N.W.2d 801	38
2006	Kircher v. City of Ypsilanti†	712 N.W.2d 738	28
2009	Teel v. Meredith· Dissent†	774 N.W.2d 527	26
2006	Mather Investors, LLC v. Larson†	720 N.W.2d 575	25
2009	Risko v. Grand Haven Charter Township Zoning Board of Appeals†	773 N.W.2d 730	23
2007	Dawson v. Secretary of State· Concurrence†	739 N.W.2d 339	21
2007	Fisher v. Fisher†	741 N.W.2d 68	20
2009	Morrison v. Secura Insurance†	781 N.W.2d 151	19

Showing the 15 most-cited of 94 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 Michigan Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Alton Davis on?: Alton Davis was a Justice of the Michigan 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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Joined the court in 2010. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).