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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1954 / Served to 1971

Harry F. Kelly

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

Harry F. Kelly was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1954. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1895–1972
Tenure: 1954–1971 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1954	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kelly authored 403 published opinions for the court (1954–1970), plus 42 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: Clark v. Dalman (216 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. 118 of these were attributed to Kelly 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
1967	Clark v. Dalman· Dissent†	150 N.W.2d 755	216
1964	Perin v. Peuler· Dissent†	130 N.W.2d 4	191
1958	Spence v. Three Rivers Builders & Masonry Supply, Inc.· Dissent†	90 N.W.2d 873	170
1965	Felgner v. Anderson· Dissent†	133 N.W.2d 136	143
1957	Sheppard v. Michigan National Bank· Concurrence†	83 N.W.2d 614	126
1969	People v. Cole· Concurrence†	172 N.W.2d 354	121
1967	Fox v. Employment Security Commission· Dissent†	153 N.W.2d 644	114
1965	Kroll v. Katz· Dissent†	132 N.W.2d 27	108
1970	Davis v. Thornton· Dissent†	180 N.W.2d 11	107
1960	Carter v. General Motors Corp.· Dissent†	106 N.W.2d 105	94
1965	Currie v. Fiting· Dissent†	134 N.W.2d 611	87
1969	Ballog v. Knight Newspapers, Inc.	164 N.W.2d 19	79
1962	People v. Kaigler· Concurrence†	118 N.W.2d 406	73
1958	People v. Hearn	93 N.W.2d 302	72
1957	Moore v. Palmer· Concurrence†	86 N.W.2d 585	67

Showing the 15 most-cited of 459 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 Harry F. Kelly on?: Harry F. Kelly 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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17 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).