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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1957 / Served to 1977

James T. Harrison

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

James T. Harrison was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1957. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1903 · age 123
Tenure: 1957–1977 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1957	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Harrison authored 121 published opinions for the court (1957–1960), plus 10 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Ruona (64 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. 81 of these were attributed to Harrison 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
1958	State v. Ruona	321 P.2d 615	64
1957	Steen v. Rustad	313 P.2d 1014	54
1958	Voyta v. Clonts	328 P.2d 655	30
1960	Yellowstone Pipe Line Co. v. State Board of Equalization†	358 P.2d 55	29
1957	Bower v. Tebbs	314 P.2d 731	29
1957	Havre Irrigation Co. v. Majerus	318 P.2d 1076	28
1960	Vonica v. Unknown Foreign & Non-Resident Heirs of Eli Stoian†	138 Mont. 384	25
1958	Cottingham v. State Board of Examiners	328 P.2d 907	25
1960	Dahlin v. Rice Truck Lines†	352 P.2d 801	24
1958	Ballenger v. Tillman	324 P.2d 1045	24
1957	Wolf v. Barry O'Leary, Inc.	318 P.2d 582	24
1957	State Ex Rel. Anderson v. State Board of Equalization	319 P.2d 221	24
1958	State v. Toomey	335 P.2d 1051	23
1957	Barrett v. ZENISEK	315 P.2d 1001	22
1960	Gustafson v. Northern Pacific Railway Company†	351 P.2d 212	20

Showing the 15 most-cited of 136 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 James T. Harrison on?: James T. Harrison 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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20 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).