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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1949 / Served to 1954

Harrison J. Freebourn

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Harrison J. Freebourn was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1949. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1890 · age 136
Tenure: 1949–1954 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1949	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Freebourn authored 81 published opinions for the court (1949–1954), plus 20 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: State Ex Rel. Bennett v. Bonner (45 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. 45 of these were attributed to Freebourn 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
1950	State Ex Rel. Bennett v. Bonner· Dissent†	214 P.2d 747	45
1952	State v. Bosch· Dissent†	242 P.2d 477	42
1951	State v. Sauter	232 P.2d 731	41
1952	Welsh v. Pritchard	241 P.2d 816	34
1950	Hames v. City of Polson· Dissent†	215 P.2d 950	29
1954	State v. Phillips· Dissent†	264 P.2d 1009	28
1954	State v. Dryman	269 P.2d 796	27
1951	State v. Coloff	231 P.2d 343	27
1952	State v. Porter· Concurrence†	242 P.2d 984	25
1953	Hein v. Fox	254 P.2d 1076	24
1950	State Ex Rel. Replogle v. Joyland Club· Dissent†	220 P.2d 988	24
1950	Fletcher v. Paige· Dissent†	220 P.2d 484	23
1949	In Re Brown's Estate· Dissent	206 P.2d 816	22
1954	State Ex Rel. Saxtorph v. District Court, Fergus County	275 P.2d 209	21
1949	Dineen v. Sullivan	213 P.2d 241	20

Showing the 15 most-cited of 109 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 Harrison J. Freebourn on?: Harrison J. Freebourn 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.

5 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).