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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1939 / Served to 1946

Howard A. Johnson

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Howard A. Johnson was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1939. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1939–1946 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1939	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Johnson authored 114 published opinions for the court (1938–1946), plus 10 dissents and 16 concurrences. Most cited: State Ex Rel. Palagi v. Regan (44 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. 4 of these were attributed to Johnson 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
1942	State Ex Rel. Palagi v. Regan	126 P.2d 818	44
1944	Hardenburgh v. Hardenburgh· Separate	146 P.2d 151	43
1943	Shields v. Shields	139 P.2d 528	42
1941	McCarten v. Sanderson	109 P.2d 1108	41
1945	Rist v. Toole County	159 P.2d 340	38
1939	Quigley v. McIntosh	103 P.2d 1067	38
1943	In Re Irvine's Estate· Dissent	139 P.2d 489	33
1942	Gullickson v. Mitchell	126 P.2d 1106	33
1941	Bergin v. Temple	111 P.2d 286	29
1942	State Ex Rel. Stafford v. Fox-Great Falls Theatre Corp.	132 P.2d 689	28
1942	Jensen Livestock Co. v. Custer County	124 P.2d 1013	24
1939	State Ex Rel. Crowley v. District Court	88 P.2d 23	24
1943	Smith v. School District No. 18· Dissent	139 P.2d 518	23
1941	Santa Rita Oil & Gas Co. v. State Board of Equalization	116 P.2d 1012	23
1943	Jordan v. Craighead	136 P.2d 526	22

Showing the 15 most-cited of 141 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 Howard A. Johnson on?: Howard A. Johnson 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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7 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).