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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Court of Appeals / Joined 2002 / Active

Christopher Murray

Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals

Christopher Murray is a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, serving since 2002. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2002 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2002	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Hillsdale Free Will Baptist College

Judicial Record

In our data, Murray authored 71 published opinions for the court (2002–2018), plus 7 dissents and 22 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Cooper (343 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. 100 of these were attributed to Murray 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
2015	People v. Cooper†	309 Mich. App. 74	343
2010	People v. Harverson†	291 Mich. App. 171	317
2004	Vodvarka v. Grasmeyer†	675 N.W.2d 847	278
2003	People v. McLaughlin†	672 N.W.2d 860	257
2016	People v. Johnson†	315 Mich. App. 163	195
2005	People v. Tierney†	703 N.W.2d 204	171
2010	Paris Meadows, LLC v. City of Kentwood†	783 N.W.2d 133	163
2003	Peña v. Ingham County Road Commission†	660 N.W.2d 351	156
2018	People of Michigan v. Elamin Muhammad†	931 N.W.2d 20	133
2012	Calhoun County v. Blue Cross Blue Shield†	297 Mich. App. 1	103
2010	People v. Railer†	288 Mich. App. 213	102
2009	Heaton v. Benton Construction Co.· Concurrence†	780 N.W.2d 618	94
2013	Barrow v. City of Detroit Election Commission†	301 Mich. App. 404	89
2014	Butler v. Simmons-Butler†	308 Mich. App. 195	88
2008	Harbor Park Market, Inc v. Gronda†	743 N.W.2d 585	81

Showing the 15 most-cited of 100 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 Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is Christopher Murray on?: Christopher Murray is a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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24 years on the Michigan Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).