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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 2005 / Served to 2013

Brian Matthew Morris

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Brian Matthew Morris was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2005. He earned a law degree from Stanford University in 1987. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1963 · age 63
Tenure: 2005–2013 · 8 yrs
Education: Stanford 1987 · Stanford

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2005	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Stanford University	B.A.	1987
Stanford University	M.A.	1987
Stanford University	J.D.	1992

Judicial Record

In our data, Morris authored 191 published opinions for the court (2005–2013), plus 17 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Kotwicki (123 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. 220 of these were attributed to Morris 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	State v. Kotwicki†	2007 MT 17	123
2007	Sunburst School District No. 2 v. Texaco, Inc.†	2007 MT 183	108
2008	Sports Shooting Ass'n v. State, Mt. Dept. of Fwp†	2008 MT 190	85
2006	In re A.N.W.†	331 Mont. 208	76
2008	State v. Hamper· Concurrence†	2008 MT 296	73
2008	Blazer v. Wall· Dissent†	2008 MT 145	57
2013	Northern Cheyenne Tribe v. Roman Catholic Church†	2013 MT 24	54
2008	Davis v. State†	2008 MT 226	50
2007	Jones v. Montana University System†	2007 MT 82	49
2005	State v. Damon†	2005 MT 218	48
2009	Kulstad v. Maniaci†	2009 MT 326	43
2009	Richards v. JTL Group, Inc.· Dissent†	2009 MT 173	41
2010	Peterson v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance· Dissent†	2010 MT 187	40
2007	State v. Michael Letasky†	2007 MT 51	40
2010	BNSF Railway Co. v. Cringle†	2010 MT 290	39

Showing the 15 most-cited of 220 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 Brian Matthew Morris on?: Brian Matthew Morris 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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8 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).