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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1993 / Served to 2012

James C. Nelson

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

James C. Nelson was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1993. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1944 · age 82
Tenure: 1993–2012 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1993	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Education

George Washington University

Judicial Record

In our data, Nelson authored 765 published opinions for the court (1958–2012), plus 148 dissents and 270 concurrences. Most cited: Carbon County v. Union Reserve Coal Co., Inc. (321 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. 586 of these were attributed to Nelson 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
1995	Carbon County v. Union Reserve Coal Co., Inc.	898 P.2d 680	321
2008	Whitlow v. State	2008 MT 140	288
1995	Bruner v. Yellowstone County· Concurrence†	272 Mont. 261	264
1996	State v. Finley	915 P.2d 208	233
2007	State v. Ariegwe	2007 MT 204	190
1998	Hulse v. State, Department of Justice	1998 MT 108	188
1995	Sacco v. High Country Independent Press, Inc.	896 P.2d 411	141
2008	Lorang v. Fortis Insurance	2008 MT 252	125
2007	State v. Kotwicki· Concurrence†	2007 MT 17	123
2007	Seltzer v. Morton	2007 MT 62	122
1999	Armstrong v. State	1999 MT 261	120
1994	State v. Arlington	875 P.2d 307	115
2010	State v. Gunderson	2010 MT 166	111
1997	Gryczan v. State	942 P.2d 112	111
2007	Sunburst School District No. 2 v. Texaco, Inc.· Concurrence†	2007 MT 183	108

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,184 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 C. Nelson on?: James C. Nelson 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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19 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).