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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1982 / Served to 1999

James H. Brickley

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

James H. Brickley was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1928–2001
Tenure: 1982–1999 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Detroit Mercy
University of Detroit Mercy

Judicial Record

In our data, Brickley authored 161 published opinions for the court (1983–2006), plus 38 dissents and 62 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Milbourn (1,306 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. 108 of these were attributed to Brickley 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
1990	People v. Milbourn	461 N.W.2d 1	1,306
1999	People v. Lukity· Concurrence†	596 N.W.2d 607	887
1994	People v. Stanaway	521 N.W.2d 557	494
1998	People v. Crawford	582 N.W.2d 785	478
1984	People v. Robideau	355 N.W.2d 592	408
1994	Fletcher v. Fletcher	526 N.W.2d 889	305
1993	People v. Kurylczyk· Concurrence†	505 N.W.2d 528	259
1996	People v. Champion· Dissent†	549 N.W.2d 849	254
1998	Lytle v. Malady· Concurrence†	579 N.W.2d 906	253
1996	Cain v Department of Corrections· Concurrence†	548 N.W.2d 210	220
1987	Smith v. Department of Public Health†	410 N.W.2d 749	204
1997	Town v. Michigan Bell Telephone Co.	568 N.W.2d 64	203
1992	Bowie v. Arder	490 N.W.2d 568	202
1995	People v. Peterson· Concurrence†	450 Mich. 349	201
1998	Oakland County Board v. Michigan Property & Casualty Guaranty Ass'n	575 N.W.2d 751	186

Showing the 15 most-cited of 261 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 James H. Brickley on?: James H. Brickley 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).