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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1947 / Served to 1949

Fred L. Gibson

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Fred L. Gibson was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1947. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1874 · age 152
Tenure: 1947–1949 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1947	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Gibson authored 12 published opinions for the court (1947–1948), plus 8 dissents. Most cited: Chovanak v. Matthews (66 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. 1 of these was attributed to Gibson 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
1948	Chovanak v. Matthews	188 P.2d 582	66
1948	State Board of Equalization v. Cole· Dissent	195 P.2d 989	60
1948	State v. Holt	194 P.2d 651	40
1948	Pritchard Petroleum Co. v. Farmers Co-Op. Oil & Supply Co.	190 P.2d 55	25
1947	Geary v. Anaconda Copper Mining Co.· Dissent	188 P.2d 185	25
1948	State Ex Rel. Kennedy v. District Court of Fifth Judicial District	194 P.2d 256	24
1948	National Surety Corp. v. Kruse· Dissent	192 P.2d 317	18
1948	State Board of Equalization v. Fall· Dissent	192 P.2d 532	17
1948	Miller v. Miller· Dissent	190 P.2d 72	17
1948	City of Philipsburg v. Porter	190 P.2d 676	15
1948	State Ex Rel. Rusch v. Board of County Com'rs	191 P.2d 670	11
1948	Read v. Stephens	193 P.2d 626	10
1948	Hamilton v. Rock· Dissent	191 P.2d 663	9
1947	Montana State Board of Examiners in Photography v. Keller	185 P.2d 503	9
1948	Glodt v. City of Missoula	190 P.2d 545	7

Showing the 15 most-cited of 20 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 Fred L. Gibson on?: Fred L. Gibson 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

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2 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).