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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1975 / Served to 1985

James Leo Ryan

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

James Leo Ryan was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1975. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1932 · age 94
Tenure: 1975–1985 · 10 yrs
Education: University of Detroit Mercy 1992

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1975	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Detroit Mercy

B.A.

1992

Judicial Record

In our data, Ryan authored 51 published opinions for the court (1976–1985), plus 37 dissents and 45 concurrences. Most cited: Shavers v. Attorney General (539 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. 133 of these were attributed to Ryan 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
1978	Shavers v. Attorney General· Concurrence†	267 N.W.2d 72	539
1979	People v. Hampton· Concurrence†	285 N.W.2d 284	474
1980	People v. Aaron· Concurrence†	299 N.W.2d 304	413
1976	People v. Oliphant†	250 N.W.2d 443	235
1982	People v. Golochowicz†	319 N.W.2d 518	220
1976	People v. Anderson· Concurrence†	247 N.W.2d 857	187
1984	Tebo v. Havlik· Concurrence†	343 N.W.2d 181	164
1983	People v. Killebrew· Concurrence†	330 N.W.2d 834	164
1982	Detroit Automobile Inter-Insurance Exchange v. Gavin†	331 N.W.2d 418	163
1977	People v. Duncan†	260 N.W.2d 58	163
1983	People v. Nash· Concurrence†	341 N.W.2d 439	147
1983	People v. Wakeford†	341 N.W.2d 68	145
1985	People v. Shabaz†	378 N.W.2d 451	144
1979	Bush v. Oscoda Area Schools· Dissent†	275 N.W.2d 268	136
1978	Parker v. City of Highland Park· Dissent†	273 N.W.2d 413	134

Showing the 15 most-cited of 133 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 Leo Ryan on?: James Leo Ryan 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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10 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).