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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 2014 / Active

James Jeremiah Shea

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

James Jeremiah Shea is a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, serving since 2014. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2014 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2014	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Shea authored 124 published opinions for the court (2014–2026), plus 7 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Polak (28 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. 103 of these were attributed to Shea 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
2018	State v. Polak†	422 P.3d 112	28
2015	Marriage of Patton v. Patton†	2015 MT 7	26
2017	Kilby Butte Colony, Inc. v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co.†	2017 MT 246	24
2015	Anderson v. BNSF Railway†	2015 MT 240	24
2016	Bird v. Cascade County· Dissent†	2016 MT 345	23
2015	Masters Group International, Inc. v. Comerica Bank· Concurrence†	2015 MT 192	21
2018	Renenger v. State†	426 P.3d 559	19
2017	D. Steilman v. Michael†	2017 MT 310	18
2015	Mlekush v. Farmers Insurance Exchange†	2015 MT 302	18
2015	Montana Department of Revenue v. Priceline.Com, Inc.†	380 Mont. 352	18
2019	City of Kalispell v. Salsgiver†	443 P.3d 504	17
2017	Buckles Ex Rel. Buckles v. Continental Resources, Inc.†	2017 MT 235	16
2017	State v. Pope†	2017 MT 12	16
2015	Planned Parenthood v. State†	2015 MT 31	16
2015	In re T.N.-S.†	379 Mont. 60	15

Showing the 15 most-cited of 138 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 is James Jeremiah Shea on?: James Jeremiah Shea is 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

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

12 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).