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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Montana Supreme Court / Joined 1969 / Served to 1970

John W. Bonner

Justice, Montana Supreme Court

John W. Bonner was a Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1902–1970
Tenure: 1969–1970 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Montana Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Bonner authored 13 published opinions for the court (1969–1970), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: State v. Jensen (72 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. 3 of these were attributed to Bonner 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
1969	State v. Jensen	455 P.2d 631	72
1969	Wells v. Stanley J. Thill and Associates, Inc.· Dissent†	452 P.2d 1015	25
1969	Lamb v. Page	455 P.2d 337	19
1969	State v. Zachmeier	453 P.2d 783	16
1969	Dean v. First National Bank of Great Falls	452 P.2d 402	16
1970	Rogers v. Hilger Chevrolet Company	465 P.2d 834	13
1969	Suhr v. Sears Roebuck and Company	450 P.2d 87	13
1969	Joseph v. Hustad Corporation	454 P.2d 916	12
1969	Magelssen v. Atwell	451 P.2d 103	12
1969	Keller v. Turner	453 P.2d 781	4
1969	Americana Homes, Inc. v. Broadmoor Corporation	455 P.2d 334	3
1969	Jankovich v. Neill†	153 Mont. 337	1
1970	In Re the Estate of Giurgiu	466 P.2d 83	0
1969	Simpson v. Simpsom†	153 Mont. 315	0

Showing the 14 most-cited of 14 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 John W. Bonner on?: John W. Bonner 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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1 year 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).