How do judges of the North Dakota Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

North Dakota Supreme Court / Joined 1935 / Served to 1964

James Morris

Justice, North Dakota Supreme Court

James Morris was a Justice of the North Dakota Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1935. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1893–1980
Tenure: 1935–1964 · 29 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1935	North Dakota Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Morris authored 417 published opinions for the court (1935–1964), plus 23 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: Ruff v. Ruff (267 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. 49 of these were attributed to Morris 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
1952	Ruff v. Ruff	52 N.W.2d 107	267
1954	Stormon v. Weiss	65 N.W.2d 475	60
1942	Leonard v. North Dakota Co-Operative Wool Marketing Ass'n	6 N.W.2d 576	60
1945	State Ex Rel. Johnson v. Baker· Dissent	21 N.W.2d 355	53
1953	State Ex Rel. Minot v. Gronna· Dissent†	59 N.W.2d 514	43
1953	Schaff v. Kennelly	61 N.W.2d 538	42
1953	Kinnischtzke v. City of Glen Ullin	57 N.W.2d 588	42
1936	Cain v. Merchants National Bank & Trust Co.	268 N.W. 719	42
1951	State ex rel. Rausch v. Amerada Petroleum Corp.†	78 N.D. 247	36
1947	Herr v. Rudolf· Dissent	25 N.W.2d 916	34
1936	Federal Land Bank v. Koslofsky	271 N.W. 907	34
1955	State v. Tjaden· Concurrence†	69 N.W.2d 272	33
1953	Dixon v. Kaufman	58 N.W.2d 797	33
1963	Colling v. Hjelle	125 N.W.2d 453	32
1961	State Ex Rel. Lyons v. Guy	107 N.W.2d 211	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 455 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 North Dakota Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was James Morris on?: James Morris was a Justice of the North Dakota Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

29 years on the North Dakota Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).