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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Michigan Supreme Court / Joined 1974 / Served to 1982

John Warner Fitzgerald

Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

John Warner Fitzgerald was a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1924–2006
Tenure: 1974–1982 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	Michigan Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Michigan State University

Judicial Record

In our data, Fitzgerald authored 95 published opinions for the court (1974–1987), plus 15 dissents and 10 concurrences. Most cited: Shavers v. Attorney General (539 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. 28 of these were attributed to Fitzgerald 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
1978	Shavers v. Attorney General· Concurrence†	267 N.W.2d 72	539
1977	Moning v. Alfono· Dissent†	254 N.W.2d 759	497
1980	People v. Aaron	299 N.W.2d 304	413
1982	Wood v. Detroit Automobile Inter-Insurance Exchange	321 N.W.2d 653	347
1976	Tuttle v. Department of State Highways	243 N.W.2d 244	257
1975	Caldwell v. Fox	231 N.W.2d 46	204
1975	People v. Beavers	227 N.W.2d 511	163
1974	Michigan Employment Relations Commission v. Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Inc	223 N.W.2d 283	159
1979	People v. Doss	276 N.W.2d 9	136
1978	Parker v. City of Highland Park	273 N.W.2d 413	134
1975	Quinlivan v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.	235 N.W.2d 732	134
1977	Kirby v. Larson· Concurrence†	256 N.W.2d 400	126
1978	Rosario v. City of Lansing	268 N.W.2d 230	125
1978	Gerzeski v. Department of State Highways	268 N.W.2d 525	107
1982	People v. Carter	330 N.W.2d 314	102

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 Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was John Warner Fitzgerald on?: John Warner Fitzgerald was a Justice of the Michigan 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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8 years on the Michigan Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).