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

Isaac W. Choate

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Isaac W. Choate was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1947. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1882 · age 144
Tenure: 1947–1949 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1947	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Choate authored 26 published opinions for the court (1947–1948), plus 5 dissents. Most cited: State v. Allison (29 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 Choate 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	State v. Allison	199 P.2d 279	29
1947	Broberg v. Northern Pac. Ry. Co.	182 P.2d 851	27
1947	Geary v. Anaconda Copper Mining Co.· Dissent	188 P.2d 185	25
1948	Lake v. Emigh	190 P.2d 550	21
1947	Francisco v. Francisco	191 P.2d 317	19
1948	National Surety Corp. v. Kruse	192 P.2d 317	18
1948	Adkins v. City of Livingston	194 P.2d 238	16
1947	McPherson v. Monegan	187 P.2d 542	16
1947	State Ex Rel. McCarten v. Corwin· Dissent	177 P.2d 189	15
1948	State Ex Rel. Sullivan v. District Court of Second Judicial District	196 P.2d 452	13
1947	Eastman v. School Dist. No. 1	180 P.2d 472	13
1948	Collishaw v. American Smelting & Refining Co.	190 P.2d 673	10
1947	House v. School Dist. No. 4	184 P.2d 285	10
1947	Ryan v. Bloom	186 P.2d 879	9
1947	State Ex Rel. Coleman v. District Court of Fifth Dist.	186 P.2d 91	9

Showing the 15 most-cited of 31 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 Isaac W. Choate on?: Isaac W. Choate 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).