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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1997 / Served to 2004

James Regnier

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

James Regnier was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1997. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1944 · age 82
Tenure: 1997–2004 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1997	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Marquette University

Judicial Record

In our data, Regnier authored 344 published opinions for the court (1997–2004), plus 17 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Elison (122 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. 117 of these were attributed to Regnier 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
2000	State v. Elison	2000 MT 288	122
1999	Oliver v. Stimson Lumber Co.	1999 MT 328	100
2004	In re A.S.†	320 Mont. 268	98
1997	Stutzman v. Safeco Insurance Co. of America	945 P.2d 32	91
1998	State v. Lane	1998 MT 76	86
2003	Trustees of Indiana University v. Buxbaum	2003 MT 97	83
1999	Iwen v. U.S. West Direct†	1999 MT 63	75
2003	Mountain West Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance v. Brewer	2003 MT 98	72
1999	Iwen v. US West Direct	1999 MT 63	72
2002	State v. Muhammad	2002 MT 47	71
1997	State v. Pratt	951 P.2d 37	71
2000	State v. Reesman· Concurrence†	2000 MT 243	66
1999	State v. Roberts· Dissent†	1999 MT 59	63
2002	Bryan v. Yellowstone County Elementary School District No. 2	2002 MT 264	62
1999	State v. Beavers	1999 MT 260	58

Showing the 15 most-cited of 372 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 Regnier on?: James Regnier 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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7 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).