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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 2011 / Active

Brian K. Zahra

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

Brian K. Zahra is a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court (5 judges, selected by nonpartisan election), serving since 2011. He previously served on the Michigan Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2011 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1999	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–
2011	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Detroit Mercy
Northeastern University
Suffolk University

Judicial Record

In our data, Zahra authored 60 published opinions for the court (1999–2019), plus 14 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Armstrong (483 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. 85 of these were attributed to Zahra 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
2011	People v. Armstrong†	490 Mich. 281	483
2012	People v. Watkins; People v. Pullen†	491 Mich. 450	466
2012	DeFRAIN v. STATE FARM MUTUAL AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE COMPANY†	491 Mich. 359	199
2012	People v. Nunley†	491 Mich. 686	160
2011	Kevin Krohn v. Home-Owners Ins Co†	490 Mich. 145	146
2012	Spectrum Health Hospitals v. Farm Bureau Mutual Ins Co of Michigan†	492 Mich. 503	137
2011	People v. Peltola†	489 Mich. 174	133
2015	People v. Smith· Dissent†	498 Mich. 466	129
2000	Phillips v. Jordan†	614 N.W.2d 183	129
2012	Kim v. Jpmorgan Chase Bank, Na· Dissent†	493 Mich. 98	128
2014	Heather Lynn Hannay v. Department of Transportation†	497 Mich. 45	124
2001	Barrett v. Kirtland Community College†	628 N.W.2d 63	121
2012	People v. Grissom· Concurrence†	492 Mich. 296	119
2014	People v. Harris†	495 Mich. 120	110
2012	Johnson v. Pastoriza†	491 Mich. 417	109

Showing the 15 most-cited of 89 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 is Brian K. Zahra on?: Brian K. Zahra is 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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15 years on the Michigan Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).