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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1935 / Served to 1947

Claude F. Morris

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Claude F. Morris was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1935. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1869 · age 157
Tenure: 1935–1947 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1935	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Education

George Washington University

Judicial Record

In our data, Morris authored 119 published opinions for the court (1935–1946), plus 90 dissents and 33 concurrences. Most cited: Rae v. Cameron (50 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. 8 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
1941	Rae v. Cameron· Dissent	114 P.2d 1060	50
1936	In Re Wilson's Estate	56 P.2d 733	48
1935	State Ex Rel. Dufresne v. Leslie	50 P.2d 959	46
1944	Hardenburgh v. Hardenburgh· Concurrence	146 P.2d 151	43
1943	Shields v. Shields· Dissent	139 P.2d 528	42
1939	Vaughn & Ragsdale Co. v. State Board of Equalization	96 P.2d 420	41
1938	State v. Keckonen· Dissent	84 P.2d 341	39
1943	In Re Irvine's Estate· Concurrence	139 P.2d 489	33
1942	Gullickson v. Mitchell· Dissent	126 P.2d 1106	33
1940	State Ex Rel. Great Falls Housing Authority v. City of Great Falls	100 P.2d 915	32
1943	Montgomery v. First National Bank· Dissent	136 P.2d 760	30
1945	Wieri v. Anaconda Copper Mining Co.	156 P.2d 838	29
1935	State v. Stark	52 P.2d 890	29
1942	State Ex Rel. Stafford v. Fox-Great Falls Theatre Corp.· Concurrence	132 P.2d 689	28
1944	State v. Allison· Dissent	153 P.2d 141	27

Showing the 15 most-cited of 243 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 Claude F. Morris on?: Claude F. 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

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

12 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).