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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1940 / Served to 1956

Emerson R. Boyles

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

Emerson R. Boyles was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1940. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1881–1960
Tenure: 1940–1956 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1940	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Boyles authored 585 published opinions for the court (1940–1956), plus 56 dissents and 57 concurrences. Most cited: Lawrence Baking Co. v. Unemployment Compensation Commission (113 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. 83 of these were attributed to Boyles 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
1944	Lawrence Baking Co. v. Unemployment Compensation Commission· Dissent	13 N.W.2d 260	113
1941	Michigan Chandelier Co. v. Morse	297 N.W. 64	86
1946	Rohan v. Detroit Racing Association· Concurrence	22 N.W.2d 433	83
1941	Chrysler Corp. v. Smith· Concurrence	298 N.W. 87	83
1950	Long v. City of Highland Park	45 N.W.2d 10	70
1947	City of Jackson v. Com'r of Revenue	26 N.W.2d 569	68
1951	State Highway Commissioner v. Detroit City Controller· Concurrence†	331 Mich. 337	64
1943	People v. Smallwood· Dissent	10 N.W.2d 303	63
1949	Bostrom v. Jennings· Concurrence†	40 N.W.2d 97	61
1948	People v. Den Uyl	31 N.W.2d 699	58
1948	Cebulak v. Lewis	32 N.W.2d 21	56
1942	People v. Serra	3 N.W.2d 35	55
1941	People v. Bigge	297 N.W. 70	54
1952	McCreary v. Shields· Dissent†	52 N.W.2d 853	53
1943	Hersey Gravel Co. v. State Highway Department· Dissent	9 N.W.2d 567	53

Showing the 15 most-cited of 703 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 Emerson R. Boyles on?: Emerson R. Boyles 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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16 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).