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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1985 / Served to 2000

Jean A. Turnage

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

Jean A. Turnage was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1985. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1926 · age 100
Tenure: 1985–2000 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1985	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Turnage authored 626 published opinions for the court (1985–2000), plus 48 dissents and 32 concurrences. Most cited: Steer, Inc. v. Department of Revenue (621 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. 279 of these were attributed to Turnage 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
1990	Steer, Inc. v. Department of Revenue	803 P.2d 601	621
1990	Story v. City of Bozeman	791 P.2d 767	162
1993	Minnie v. City of Roundup	849 P.2d 212	112
1997	Gryczan v. State· Concurrence†	942 P.2d 112	111
1997	State v. Siegal· Concurrence†	934 P.2d 176	97
1996	Plumb v. Fourth Judicial District Court· Concurrence†	927 P.2d 1011	92
1986	Butte Community Union v. Lewis· Concurrence†	712 P.2d 1309	91
1995	State v. Egelhoff· Concurrence†	272 Mont. 114	81
1993	State v. Flack	860 P.2d 89	73
1996	Estate of Strever v. Cline· Concurrence†	924 P.2d 666	71
2000	State v. Reesman· Dissent†	2000 MT 243	66
1996	Stratemeyer v. Lincoln County· Dissent†	915 P.2d 175	64
1990	Harrison v. Chance	797 P.2d 200	58
1985	Pfost v. State· Dissent†	713 P.2d 495	58
1992	State v. Crist· Dissent†	253 Mont. 442	54

Showing the 15 most-cited of 707 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 Jean A. Turnage on?: Jean A. Turnage 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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15 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).