How do judges of the Michigan Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Court of Appeals / Joined 1994 / Active

Joel P. Hoekstra

Judge, Michigan Court of Appeals

Joel P. Hoekstra is a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, serving since 1994. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1994 · 32 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1994	Michigan Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Calvin College
Valparaiso University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hoekstra authored 79 published opinions for the court (1995–2018), plus 17 dissents and 24 concurrences. Most cited: Lewis v. LeGrow (253 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. 119 of these were attributed to Hoekstra 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
2003	Lewis v. LeGrow· Concurrence†	670 N.W.2d 675	253
2005	People v. Brown· Concurrence†	267 Mich. App. 141	244
2010	People v. Swain†	288 Mich. App. 609	217
2014	People v. Vandenberg†	307 Mich. App. 57	120
2005	Laier v. Kitchen· Concurrence†	702 N.W.2d 199	111
2013	People v. Mitchell†	301 Mich. App. 282	107
2001	People v. Frohriep†	637 N.W.2d 562	88
2000	Kalamazoo Oil Co. v. Boerman†	618 N.W.2d 66	88
2014	Arbor Farms, LLC v. Geostar Corp.†	305 Mich. App. 374	78
2015	People v. Al-Shara†	311 Mich. App. 560	72
2001	Killips v. Mannisto· Dissent†	624 N.W.2d 224	68
2010	Attorney General v. Powerpick Player's Club of Michigan, LLC· Concurrence†	783 N.W.2d 515	59
2012	People v. Nicholson†	297 Mich. App. 191	58
2008	Allen v. Bloomfield Hills School District· Concurrence†	760 N.W.2d 811	49
2017	People of Michigan v. Glorianna Woodard†	909 N.W.2d 299	48

Showing the 15 most-cited of 120 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 Michigan Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is Joel P. Hoekstra on?: Joel P. Hoekstra is a Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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