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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1982 / Served to 1997

Dorothy Comstock Riley

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

Dorothy Comstock Riley was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1924–2004
Tenure: 1982–1997 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Wayne State University
Wayne State University

Judicial Record

In our data, Riley authored 120 published opinions for the court (1985–1997), plus 70 dissents and 56 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Pickens (763 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. 135 of these were attributed to Riley 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
1994	People v. Pickens	521 N.W.2d 797	763
1995	People v. Bahoda	531 N.W.2d 659	724
1994	People v. Stanaway· Concurrence†	521 N.W.2d 557	494
1993	Radtke v. Everett	501 N.W.2d 155	347
1993	Farrington v. Total Petroleum, Inc.· Dissent†	501 N.W.2d 76	319
1994	People v. Grant	520 N.W.2d 123	296
1997	Weymers v. Khera	563 N.W.2d 647	294
1993	Booth Newspapers, Inc v. University of Michigan Board of Regents· Dissent†	507 N.W.2d 422	278
1992	Auto-Owners Insurance v. Churchman· Concurrence†	489 N.W.2d 431	271
1992	People v. Bullock· Concurrence†	485 N.W.2d 866	252
1994	Peterman v. Department of Natural Resources	521 N.W.2d 499	247
1989	Allstate Insurance v. Freeman	443 N.W.2d 734	238
1991	Upjohn Co. v. New Hampshire Insurance	476 N.W.2d 392	235
1996	Cain v Department of Corrections· Dissent†	548 N.W.2d 210	220
1986	Matras v. Amoco Oil Co.· Dissent†	385 N.W.2d 586	212

Showing the 15 most-cited of 247 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 was Dorothy Comstock Riley on?: Dorothy Comstock Riley was 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).