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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1995 / Served to 1998

Charles E. Erdmann

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Charles E. Erdmann was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1946 · age 80
Tenure: 1995–1998 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Montana State University

Judicial Record

In our data, Erdmann authored 48 published opinions for the court (1995–1997), plus 13 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Finley (233 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. 29 of these were attributed to Erdmann 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
1996	State v. Finley· Concurrence†	915 P.2d 208	233
1996	Busta Ex Rel. Busta v. Columbus Hospital Corp.· Concurrence†	916 P.2d 122	139
1996	Porter v. Galarneau	911 P.2d 1143	67
1996	Stratemeyer v. Lincoln County· Concurrence†	915 P.2d 175	64
1996	Wadsworth v. State· Concurrence†	911 P.2d 1165	52
1996	Tanner v. Dream Island, Inc.	913 P.2d 641	40
1995	In re of Inquiry into M.M.· Concurrence†	274 Mont. 166	38
1996	Peuse v. Malkuch	911 P.2d 1153	32
1996	Kolar v. Bergo	929 P.2d 867	31
1996	Kleinhesselink v. Chevron, U.S.A.· Dissent†	920 P.2d 108	30
1996	State v. Cline	909 P.2d 1171	27
1996	In Re Marriage of Stufft	916 P.2d 767	26
1996	State v. New	917 P.2d 919	25
1996	Heiat v. Eastern Montana College· Dissent†	912 P.2d 787	25
1996	Sage v. Gamble· Dissent†	929 P.2d 822	24

Showing the 15 most-cited of 66 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 Charles E. Erdmann on?: Charles E. Erdmann 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

3 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).